Service - Battle of the bands

The highly anticipated competition for almost 4 months finally took place on Saturday the 24th of November. The concert was a tremendous success and the feedback we received was very positive. The funds will be directed towards the Cleft-lip and palette foundation at the Lady Ridgeway hospital in Colombo. We will submit the check to the hospital once the accounts have been finalised and the money is ready to be given. 

The process of organising the concert was demanding and required time and effective planning. The stage was at our own school and the audience comprised of members of the school (students + staff) as well as members outside of our school. 

Action bodybar sessions

For my action this semester I have continued training at the bodybar gym in colombo. My sessions have been following a slightly variated routine as of recent times:
Monday - Biceps and Back
Tuesday - Triceps and Chest
Thursday - Shoulders and abdominals
Friday - Cardio and abdominals
In addition to my new routine, I have commenced a new running routine during the weekends in preparation for a run I will be doing for charity on the 9th of December 2012. This run will be a charity event where the proceeds from admission tickets will be directed towards a charity group associated with helping children in a village in Ampara, a district on the East coast of Sri Lanka. The combination of action and service will help me become more involved in CAS related activities during this stressful period for the grade 12 students in the climax of our IB diplomas.

Cleft-palette interact meetings

In order to spread publicity in an effective manner for my service group, we visitted five different schools last week on Wednesday (7th November) in order to meet with their school's respective interact groups. Interact is a concept unfamiliar in our school but very comon amongst other schools in Colombo, both international and local. The schools we met with were, the British school in Colombo, College of world education, Willesden college, Asian International school and Elizabeth Moir Senior school. In each of these schools we met with at least 3 members of their respective interact groups and presented our cause with a powerpoint presentation. Two schools confirmed that they would be interested and willing to help us publicize the cause in their school assemblies. The other three did say they were interested but are yet to confirm in what ways they will be able to help us.

This experience helped me enhance my speaking skills and self-confidence when presenting in work environment. The experience also enhanced my leadership skills as I was able to speak for my group and explain our situation and why it is important that we gain publicity for this cause.

I feel that this was a crucial day for each of us in terms of our service-oriented life at osc. It meant we would dedicate one entire school day to service in order to spread awareness about cleft-lip and palette.

Below our some pictures of our group interacting with the fellow interact members of the Colombo school comity:

Service project - Cleft lip and palette

During the last three weeks the cleft-palette service group has been procrastinating and contemplating different ways of spreading awareness about our cause. We have been attempting to correct the flaws we had during last year. We had been told by our CAS supervisor that we spent much more time on fundraising than we should have and much less time on peronsally engaging with the victims of the condition. This lead us to devise a new perspective on the issue. From now on we will spend time at the Lady Ridgeway hospital while making efforts to complete the sequel to Battle of the Bands which hopes to surpass the total funds that we made last year for the victims of cleft-palette.

In addition to the concert, we have initiated a new program where we will contact other schools in Sri Lanka via their respective interact societies. By doing this we will spread awareness about our cause and they will see it as an opportunity to help children in need by publicizing out cause.

Creativity - School production

This year I have decided to take part in the school production once again. This is not often something that year 2 DP students do because of the excessive workload. I decided that I would commit to this despite my busy schedule as it will be a semester long commitment where I will be able to engage in creative activities and rehearse on a regular basis to perfect my role.
In this year's play I have been faced with a more challenging role than last year as my character is a Swedish attorney and my teacher is very keen that I embrace the Swedish accent which is not a particularly easy task.
Also this gives me an opportunity to work with others like last year but since this play will only feature grade 10 students and above, it will be more mature and will be deal with more serious themes that will require more creative thought in terms of portraying the characters emotions.
As it is a group effort, I will get a chance to work collaboratively with others to accomplish something that any of us wouldn't be able to do as plain individuals.

Action - Bodybar Gym Sessions

Since the commencement of grade 12 I have committed to a workout routine at the Bodybar Gym in Colombo, Sri Lanka. Under the guidance of a senior trainer and one of my former colleagues in school I have formulated a workout routine where I am able to work each muscle group of the body an even number of times throughout the week. Below is the routine that I devised:

 

Monday - Back + Biceps muscle groups

Tuesday - Chest + Triceps muscle groups

Thursday - Shoulders + abdominal muscle groups

Friday - Leg muscle groups

The above routine provides a balance and enables me to work each muscle group effectively and evenly throughout the week. By following this routine in the long run I believe I will be able to make many improvements in my physique and core strength as well as upper, lower body strength. 

Above is an image of me performing my primary exercise for the calf muscles. This is an example of isolation exercise. 

The above two images are of a more sophisticated exercise known as squats to work the quadricep muscles more than anything else.

The above workout is from my most recent workout and more posts will be uploaded in the upcoming weeks do document my progress in the gym. 

Service - Involvement with the Rotaract club of Colombo

During the summer I was informed by my cousin Hussain Akbarally that the Rotaract club of Colombo was organizing a charity event in the aim of helping less fortunate children in the North of the country. These children had suffered as a result of the civil war that tormented the lives of many for a period of almost 30 years. To this day children are orphaned and are being looked after in an environment lacking very basic luxuries that we often take for granted.
The event was a premier of a movie and by spreading the word across colleagues in school and the community in Colombo I was able to raise Rs. 10,000 through ticket sales as well as sponsorships from individual families.
Although the event wasn't interactive (spending time with less fortunate children) I believe I was helping spread awareness as I emphasized the importance of helping the less fortunate to community so much larger than the school.

Above is the poster for the Sri Lankan premier of the Dark Knight rises which took place on the 1st of September.

Grade 12 has begun! Goals for semester 1!

We have Finally begun our senior year. This year I will lead the cleft lib and palette awareness service group along my classmate Nadeera Illeperumaarachchi. In addition I will be playing cricket during the after school activity time slot. For creativity I hope to once again take part in the school play which will be time consuming but nevertheless a lot of fun.
While the above 3 goals will be my main focus in each of the creativity, action and service aspects; I hope to take part in other minor activities that relate to any of the three aspects of CAS.

I learnt that for Service needed to be interactive in addition to fundraising so I was inspired to make some changes with my co-leader at the end of last year once we assumed leadership. We have decided to make more regular visits to the Lady Ridgeway hospital where all many cleft palette victims have been hospitalized and many of whom come from families who can't afford the operation. This will be a great interactive learning experience for me as well as my fellow group members as we will speak with the parents of these children and spend time with them (perhaps entertain) to bring a smile to their faces.

For Action I learnt that going to the gym alone would suffice in terms of challenging me physically only. However I came to realise at the end of grade 11 that doing a team sport would be much more interactive, collaborative and mentally challenging. This is what lead me to choose cricket as an after school activity. After a few classmates suggested the idea, I was strongly in favor of it due to my fascination with the game as well as my desire to play a team sport on a  regular basis. I believe that by playing with a time I will be able to collaborate with other team members in a way other than in academics.

For Creativity I feel that I was very active last year and hope to continue my participation in the school production. As this is a semester long commitment I feel it will keep me busy for the next 3 months. Even though grade 12 students aren't required to take part in the grade 12 production I will attempt to do so with my busy schedule in the hope that my creativity criteria will be fulfilled.

Bodybar gym sessions - Action

Every week for the past 6 months I have been attending the gym "Bodybar" in order to keep fit and strong during this stressful IB diploma course. I have been working collaboratively with a colleague from school in order to maximise efficiency during the workout sessions. My main motivation for starting regular gym sessions lied in the ability to work and build different muscles of the human body. Hence I realised that this process would be extremely physical and strenous (all the more reason to do it for my action aspect of CAS)

Food and fun fair - Service

On March 10th I took part in the school's annual food and fun fair. The event is aimed at raising money for charity and each grade raised money for a particular service group that our school is involved with. Our grade came up with the idea of sponge throwing as an activity to raise money. I had a significant role in this as I collected all the money with the help of a few friends and was solely responsible for adverstising the activity during the fair.

This related to Increased their awareness of their own strengths and areas for growth because it enabled me to spread awareness for a good cause and help raise money. Also the skill of spreading awareness was further enhanced during this fair and is something that I believe will help me in the years to come whenever I want to engage in a charity event or anything of that nature.

Undertaken new challenges as well because I never had to spread awareness amongst such young people before. I had to communicate with children from pre-school all the way to grade 12. 

Cleft-Palette - Visiting the Lady Ridgeway Hospital

Yesterday after school we all went as a group to the Lady Ridgeway hospital and we got a chance to see some of the victims of this condition and how they had been affected. We were unable to interact with them however because they were very young and some only a few weeks old.
We were fortunate enough to meet the Plastic Surgeon who is in charge of all cleft-palette procedures in Sri Lanka. He approved of ou idea of spreading the word regarding the illness and the urgency of curing it within the first year of birth.

Cleft-Palette second semester

Yesterday, we had our second meeting with our Cleft-palette service group. The group has gained many new members this semester and i feel this is primarily due to them witnessing the success of our fund-raising concert last year in November. During this meeting the previous leaders appointed me as co-leader of the service group. I believe that being in this position will help me spread awareness in our local and greater community.

Work Experience

During the Week Without Walls trip which i wasn't able to attend due to an ankle injury, i decided to get some work experience so as to make my week productive in terms of CAS. I went to my dads office and helped him manage his accounts and other financial issues. This was a new experience for me as it was dealing with real life and people's needs from a business perspective. This is something i have always wanted to do and this experience helped manifest that desire.

Week Without Walls preparation

In light of the upcoming week without walls trip, we were all assigned jobs to do during the last few weeks and this week as the trip is only a few days away. In my group there were 4 people in total (considerably small), so we had a lot of weight on shoulders. We were responsible for the fund raising and the gifts which would be bought with the money we raised. Since these children are under privileged, it will be greatly appreciated by them if we can provide them with some of the basic needs.

This relates to service because we were spreading a worthy cause and letting people know and by making them aware, we were giving them an incentive to donate some money. This was by no means an easy task and it required constant reminding and persistence in order to convince people to donate money.

Eventually we were able to obtain Rs. 38,000 after much persuasion. We went to a store next to our school on Thursday 19th January and we were able to order the required goods for Week Without Walls.

The next day we went back to the store after school to collect the goods and we carried them back to school. 

Semester 2 goals

This semester I hope to do more Action-related activities as that was the one thing I lacked last semester. In order to do this I have come up with a number of activities that I could do to fulfill the action requirement. Firstly I will continue ultimate Frisbee as it is competitive and requires speed as well as skill and determination. I hope to do one more sport (maybe badminton) in addition because once a week isn't sufficient for my liking. One more thing I am currently involved in is gym which I haven't spoken at all about in my blog. I hope to start blogging about gym as it is something I do many times a week and definitely a good form of action.

I am currently involved in the cleft-palette service group and I hope to continue my involvement with the group as it was a huge success during the first semester. I will also hopefully be attending the week without walls trip which will play a huge part in my service as we will be re-building schools and helping people in need of a school for their basic education needs.

For creativity I was very active last semester as I took part in the school musical and performed for the entire school on UN day. These 2 performances took hours each week to perfect and required a lot of commitment. This semester I will do some minor performances (grade 12 projects).