Habitat for Humanity Student Group has spent the last 2 months planning and trying to figure out new solutions to raising awareness. It was time for something new to be done so we threw away our old ideas and brainstormed for ideas that would really work effectively in conveying our message and get us the public awareness that we've been looking for since the beginning of this year.
Today i walk around school and hear people through the cracks of the walls speaking about the event happening on December 13th. It is important for us to get the response we need and bring in large amounts of people so that we can make everything possible. We live in a world where we dont have to face the hardship and the stress of not having money to support ourselves or not having a well constructed house to shelter us. We as a group want nothing more than to give to others and make a difference in their lives, we have all we need but they dont and its time we took the initiative to make things right. Growing up in this country i open my eyes to a place unlike where im from and questions for years why things weren't the same as in my home country Switzerland. As i grew older i was able to understand the reasons for why these things happen and how they come up. "Poverty" one of the most commonly used words by foreign people when i was young, this is how they referred to Sri Lanka as.

Being able to do something for the community and country i was surrounded by is a privilege, this run will be considered the most successful event host by the Habitat for Humanity Student Group. Our meetings would consist of brainstorming, planning, organising etc. Once we had the idea to what we wanted to do, it was time to take what we said and actually make it come true and have things happen. As a leader it is my responsibility to make sure that when we meet together that we work collaboratively and focus highly on getting every area of this Charity Run completed to perfection. It was more of a challenge for us when we found out that Elizabeth Moir School dropped out because they felt like we weren't committed enough. That did make things harder for us as a group because without Moir we were smaller in number and that meant each person in our group would have to work 110% in order to accomplish this plan. We split up into 3 teams, (Organising, Advertising, Sponsoring). Each team would finalise specific tasks related to the Charity Run.

SAISA Volleyball 2015-16

This being my 2nd year taking part in SAISA Volleyball, i’m more nervous that excited due to many reasons. Losing members from your team due to graduations and moving isn’t easy to deal with, having adapted to being a part of one team i have realised that there is nothing i can do about that but simply to move on. The team we have this year is younger, and less experienced but over the course of 5 weeks we have developed our partnerships, individual skills, and communication which has raised our standards and expectations for SAISA that awaits us end of October. 

Travelling to Nepal for the second time this coming year will be an interesting turn out, im ready to be apart of and play with the team that has been put together. I am fairly confident that we have the capability to achieve the goals we had set for ourselves as players and as a team in whole. Being students of the IB and participating in international sport events allows students to participate in something they are personally interested in and compete to challenge themselves to accomplish various things. SAISA to me is not only a one way ticket away from school but a moment 10 players can share amongst each other.

Trainings take place Tuesday, Fridays & Saturdays. During Thursday and Wednesdays we play the sport for fun just to get used to constantly playing and practicing certain aspects of the game. Every friday we take part in a game against local schools volunteering to play against us for our benefit as well as for them to compete with newer teams. Our team focuses mainly on being reflective participants, at the end of each game we meet together and briefly summarise the positives and negatives on the game, we analyse what can be done better, where each individual players need to improve on and how they should do that. Other than being reflective and changing our mistakes we don't focus on other IB Leaner Profiles. 

With the tournament 3 weeks away i'm static to see how well we do and what the results will be for OSC SAISA Boys Volleyball team 2015-16. 

CAS Goals 2015 (DP2)

Creativity: 

This year i needed to make sure i had fulfilled Creativity Action and Service requirements specially under the creativity concept. Having not posted or made as much commitment with Creativity other than my Service (Habitat for Humanity) i have come up with the idea to do a fitness course for students in my grade that takes part at my house. By the term "fitness" i expand into particular areas of the body that people would like to build on. This program last 100 days and i have already started it about 1 week prior to this post. I do this 4 days a week (Monday, Wednesday, Friday, Saturday). Each day comes with a completely new workout which allows me and my peers to work different parts of the body each day through without risking any muscle problems or pains. 

Having this be something completely new for me to do i thought it was possibly the most reliable way for me to complete my creativity part for CAS. Setting an example for the IB Learner Profile im being a risk taker by going out of my comfort zone and creating workout plans for people who are willing to come 4 days a  week and train. Bring in my knowledge to my friends and collaborating with them for my benefit including theirs. 

Action: 

As for action SAISA has begun again and i am going to be participating all year round, for the first 2 months of this semester i will be joining the volleyball team for the 2nd year round. Travelling to Nepal for the second time will definitely be an experience for me. On the second semester we have Football season and being my favourite sport i will be joining my team for the 3rd year. Going out to Dhaka, Bangladesh we hope to head into the tournament with our heads up high and end the tournament bringing the trophy home for the 2nd year in a row. 

Service:  

My 5th year in Service i have chosen to stick with Habitat for Humanity once again. For my last year of being a community and service leader my partners and i have accomplished all the goals we set for the year. This year is time for progress and change. Starting the year with more volunteers than the previous year we are more determined to set harder challenges and have them become accomplished. Fundraising is still our main goal but for the time being we will be recreating that bond with Elizabeth Moir school and finding some time to get together with British School. 

Final Reflection

This year had all turned out well for me, i managed to achieve regularly set goals for myself over the time and grew as a student in the IB Diploma as well. Understanding the upcoming challenges for next year, setting myself more goals will allow me to maintain control of my schooling situation and excel in the classes that require better scores. Developing my understanding as an individual for Habitat for Humanity i was able to find a certain interest which i will continue to uphold for the next year to come. I have not only grown fond of working along side an organization here in Sri Lanka but have also been taking initiative for what they stand for and aim to achieve for their people.

At the beginning of this school year i stepped into the responsibilities and challenges the IB holds, coming from MYP it is a very big change and requires you to be organised and well prepared with the work load. For me this became more of a problem as i had already realized my organization skills weren't up to par with the other students in my class and that it was something that needed to be changed. Knowing it was going to be hard for me to accomplish it was probably one of the only goals that remain uncompleted. In most classes i became more productive and focused with my work and time, excelling is most of my classes my aims for the last year of school would be to be able to get higher than an average score in all my classes, that means a 5 or above.

During the last week of January 2014 my grade and I were split up into little groups and combined with students from the grade below. Each student was given the option of choosing their trip that they wanted to take part in. Week Without Walls helped was always the most important trip for me because of what we learned and the fact that we would be missing a whole week of school. The idea for me was to choose an area that i had never visited and looked at its features and learn more about it. Im very fond of Sri Lanka and all that it has to offer but that doesn't mean i know everything about this country which is why i always remain interested. Being born and living here for the last 17 years i have seen a lot of change, i have grown with the country itself and i am proud to consider this place my home. That field trip allowed me to better understand the country i call home, all its aspects and stories that make Sri Lanka what it is today.

3 years ago on October 2012 i joined Habitat for Humanity and for me it was a new experience and something i really enjoyed taking part it. Being an MYP student i was first introduced to Community and Service and saw the reality of problems that people in Sri Lanka face and go through in their daily lives and that developed my emotional interaction with people from these poorer locations. I was never mentally prepared to see such harsh conditions and deal with the idea that people do suffer because i knew nothing about Sri Lanka. As the first year ended i was determined to stay with the Service group and do everything i can to help and make a change. I was emotionally affected by what i had seen and i remained confident that we could really make a difference for these people. It's been 3 years and today i am the Community and Service Leader for Habitat for Humanity. Today we are working together with other schools and creating a stronger inter-school relationship where we help raise awareness and inform people of the needs of global importance. We will remain to remind people about what we do and get them to help us make a change. I have gained more knowledge then i have ever expected to receive over the course of this year. Becoming more of an individual student i am able to make the right choices and make a difference with my studies as well as my Community and Service.

Habitat for Humanity Meeting

Habitat for Humanity Organisation has provided us with the ability to assist them with their projects. For us it is very important to maintain our connection with this organisation enabling us to support those who are in need. Last week we had asked a few members from Habitat including the Head of corporations to come to OSC and meet with our service group. Over the past few months we have set up a number of individual fundraising projects to raise awareness. 

The meeting was necessary for us due to the fact that we hadn’t been in connection with them over a long period of time and we needed to know what was happening. The last build we went on was in Trincomalee and that was the “Youth Build” organised by Habitat itself. Since then we haven't been able to go on many builds and we were interested to know what our funds were going for to make sure that we wouldn't be raising money for the wrong reason. The process of making a build possible takes a long period of time and that was something we were not sure about, we needed to understand their processes and look for alternative solutions to assist them as well as become more productive with our time. 

With the money we raise where do our funds go and what are they being used for? 

Can builds be established faster or is there a process that needs to happen? 

These two questions were presented to them from us as a Service Group to better help understand the situation at hand. One of the Habitat for Humanity representatives explained to us the steps and time that it takes in order to make one of the builds possible. 

Transportation cost, land ownership, payment of building material, advertisement of the project were one of their biggest challenges faced when trying to organise a build for us. The weren’t raising enough funds to make everything possible and this made things a lot harder to organise as they were limited to certain resources. We were able to establish a solution for this problem which came from the students themselves. Having students with parents who work for high end companies we were able to come up with enough funds for the organisation to maintain their planning process for these builds. 

The housing cost is a big issue for us, depending on the location of construction their are fixed prices set for building houses. In Matara a house would cost 600,000 rupees where as an area that had a marshy terrain would cost 800,000 rupees. We have raised 250,000 rupees and we strive to collect more but we do understand that raising that much money will become a big challenge for us to achieve given the limited amount of time we have. We look to interacting with other organisations to see if they would like to match us with our funds and donate some money for our cause. If that ends up being a success then we will be able to raise the amount of money needed over a shorter period of time. 

Habitat for Humanity Youth Build (Goals)

Habitat for Humanity Sri Lanka takes on the Habitat Youth Build tomorrow on the 21st of March 2015. Its a youth led campaign aiming to tackle the global challenge of substandard housing for those who required the assistance. Growing each year this organization has reached other countries within the Asian Pacific region. This youth build engages young people to take action together to build homes and communities, advocate for decent shelter, raise funds and awareness about the rising poverty housing situation spreading to various parts of the country.

With this organization that we are collaborating with we have also volunteered to be apart of this Youth Build and promote the ideas of Habitat for Humanity. Not only will we be building houses but working various other jobs that are given to us at the time. Up to 500 other people are taking part in this build to issue the global crisis occurring here in Sri Lanka. Poverty as we know is bad, it does not just simple affect ones life but prevents a chance from ever being change. Poverty stricken people are dependent on the assistance of others because they aren't able to fulfil the requirements of housing. The living cost here in Sri Lanka isn't expensive for an average working person, but in this situation these people need to take loans to pay off their bills.

We know of the struggle and that is why we have chosen to help. For us this will be a new experience, sure, we've conducted a few builds but nothing as big as this. Not only are we working alongside hundreds of other people but we will be working a whole day. Tiering? yes, it is, but its for a good cause and for the people. There's a lot we wish to achieve over the course of this Youth Build and some of those would have to be;

1. Using time to our advantage. We want to be able to have as much work before the day ends. 
2. Working collaboratively and helping each other when in need. Working as a group means working together, we are a team and that means everyone gets involved. 
3. Behaviour around the site is important, specially as representatives from OSC we do need to set a good example. 

Following the IB learner profile we are being risk takers, taking responsibility into our own hands, solving problems and working out where things go. Helping the community by providing them with more volunteers and extra hands to help out with the jobs there. With everyone working together we should be able to have a lot accomplished within that one day. 

Week Without Walls (Highlands)

For our Week Without Walls trip we were given 4 options for the types of trips we can choose to go on. Those were:

• Highlands (Hiking) 
• Cultural Triangle 
• Jaffna (War Affects on Sri Lanka) 
• Coast to Coast (Bicycle Distance Riding) 

I chose to go with the first one which was (Highlands) and that was all about hiking up and through the mountains which is something that i am not only interested in but also capable of doing. Being an athlete i do like do endure various types of challenges and experience new things. Having already done a lot of cycling around the country and in other parts of the world, i personally felt the need to challenge myself once again with something new. This being the best option out of the other 3 i knew that it was accomplishable. The idea of Week Without Walls is for students to become more practical and learn through the outdoors, they are granted 1 week away from school to go to a chosen locations by teachers and begin observing the natural beauty that the country has to offer. 

Our trip was all about the environment and how things have changed over periods of time. Living in the outdoors, where its cold, wet, windy and sometimes even very hot (during the day). It is important for us to be able to learn something as well as have fun. Being apart of this country for 17 years i have never experienced something as interesting as this. The ride to our location took us a long time but before getting there we had a stop at some camp site where we would settle for the first day, take a tour and enjoy what it has to offer. 

For the first day, we went and took a look at a natural made waterfall where we were also able to swim in and go under. There was only one problem.. the water was freezing cold! Most of the students while going in warned everyone that it was extremely cold, so that took me a little bit longer to get in. 

The second day was where we head out towards the highlands, which was roughly a 4 hour drive or even longer. With a few snack stops along the way i thing we managed to get there in one piece. The location itself was within the wild, as we drove closer to our destination site we were able to see large groups of Sambar Dear walking. 

The location itself was a natural habitat for the animals living there. The terrain was more wet and contained larger fields of grass and eventually lead to a forest/jungle. With this being our home for the next 3 days we looked to making the most out of it, which we ended up doing. 

After settling in we all took a walk around the area to see what we are surrounded by and where things are for ourselves. We discovered a random telephone booth that was one of those old red ones that were all around England. It was placed right in the middle of a hill near a settlement. 

Given the prior information about the location we all came well prepared for the cold nights and the wet days. It was going to be hard to adjust but eventually we managed to do it. Our first hike was towards a 2000 meter high mountain and our goal was to be able to reach the top within 3 hours, sit down and look at the view from its peak. 

The other days that we were there we decided to and have more hikes except they were at different locations, we were expected to walk towards the mountain itself. 

These mountains that we visited were called "Mini Worlds End" & "Greater Worlds End" both being of the same kind, slightly separated from each other but within the same location. Climbing to the top and looking at the view before myself was one of the most amazing experiences in life. When we look at the beauty that our planet has inhabited, everything that we did that day was something to remember. The walk, the view, the breeze, the information told to us about each site. It gave me a sense of how nice things can be no matter how much bad there is around us. Having chosen this trip got me to realise a lot of things and that is what i value the most, it was an adventure time well spent for one week outdoors. 

SAISA Boys Football Champions

On the 4th of February 16 boys from the OSC football team including myself took part in the SAISA Football tournament. Each year our school participates in international competitions that involve us to travel to other host countries and fight for the championship titles against other schools. The host countries that take part for these SAISA tournaments are Chennai, Bombay, Dhaka, Oman, Nepal, Karachi, Lahore and Islamabad.

Each school sends student representatives to fight for a championship trophy to take back home to prove their dominance in that sports that they take part it. This year these 8 schools including ourselves took part in the football tournament that was hosted in Nepal, Katmandu. The process for taking part involves try outs, intense training sessions, games to test and prove your individual skill. These 3 aspects is what helps you make the team, if you excel in all those areas and prove your dominance you are safe to guarantee yourself a spot on the top 16 team. Being given only 6 weeks to cover all those aspects it was quite a challenge for us because some of the players that tried out hadn't played football or were experienced but didn't know how to play with a team. Imagine being given 6 weeks to work with, play with, train with new players. It gets hard to get used to but we had an advantage.

OSC is a school of 400 students and there aren't many seniors, roughly about 230 students that are in the secondary school. We had an advantage because most of our players on the team had been taking part in the last 3 years of SAISA football so working together with each other wasn't that hard for us to do. We knew each other and how each other all played and we were confident on stealing the win for this years International SAISA Tournament.
Knowing the location and country of Nepal itself we weren't worried about winning or being strong we were worried about independent fitness because of the temperature and altitude there. Nepal is a cold country and for 16 students that live in the tropics to move out into the colder region is going to be a harder adaption for as to make. Most students aren't even friends with the cold weather and that includes myself. The only obstacle in our way was the cold and we had to figure out reasons and solutions for working/playing past that. The tournament is 3 days long but we were there for 5, we took the time to adjust to the weather and admire the country and its features that it had.

Those 3 days had been the best and worst times of my life. The OSC Geckos take to the semi finals and we knew from the start that we were the dominant team and that nothing could stand in our way from getting that championship title. Winning the Semi Finals against our competitors, the host school of Nepal. We faced the Lincoln School and beat them 3-0 with some casualties. I personally was taken down and had dislocated my shoulder, and received 2 muscle bruises and 2 torn ligaments in my shoulder near my rotator cuffs. With being sent to the hospital i was unable to play the Finals against Bombay, but although i was upset i was happy to say i had contributed a lot to bringing our team to the finals.

Towards the end of the 3rd day we faced off against Bombay and took the game to penalties after a 1-1 draw during the match and a no goal process in both extra time. Penalties it was, having not taken or practiced that much of penalty shots we managed to come out on top and take that championship! The Geckos made history and it is a memory i will never forget and always cherish.

 

Fund Raising for CAS

Our community and service group combined with a few more students from Elizabeth Moir school  had established the idea to start fund raising and spreading awareness. The fund raising came from us as a collective decision to do, and it was going to be done through selling pizza to the Modern United Nations participant in our school. Usually every saturday there are crowds of students that come to our school to take part for COMUN and with taking place in our own school we decided that it wouldn't be a good idea to sell pizza to them as well as other people who are willing to pay for some to eat.

The point of this pizza sale is to raise awareness for our Organization so that more people become aware of what they do and why we work along side them. We had produced pamphlets and borrowed some brochures from Habitat for Humanity. With this we would be able to expand the greater idea of what we are trying to achieve and not only raise money and begin funding for their purpose of construction but to also have more students from other schools join in with our group so that we can work faster and have more done within shorter periods of time. Right now we are collaborating with Elizabeth Moir school but we wish to spread out and have more volunteers join us from British School, CIS, AIS, Gateway College as well as others that are near by. We stand with only one goal and that is to promote the aims and reasons as to why we do what we do.

By the end of the day the amount of money we had made was enough to construct two houses down south or up north for those who needed any assistance or reconstructing to be done to better benefit their state of living.

Habitat For Humanity (Visiting New Locations)

On the 6th of December our Service group joined with the Moir School had taken a trip out to a local region in Wathala. Our goal was to bring in an action purpose to help people there get the organization to help them with their housing conditions. When we arrived there the first observation that i had was the surrounding itself was to be very damp and wet. Wathala is known to be in the wet zone where there tends to be a lot of rain. Within ground level these people are prone to having their houses flooded by the rain. As a group what we strive to achieve is to bring aid to those who need it and this situation with the constant flooding made it critical  for assistance.

4 houses were looked at had all the same problems, they were built too low, their material was all ply wood and badly hammered nails that didn't give them much support or stability. The wood being the weakest aspect and the biggest problem of all, its all because when the rain starts to flood the wood becomes wet and soggy leading it to either break or start to fall out. Remember this is one of the wettest areas in Sri Lanka so these people who live here have to deal with rain fall almost every day. They didn't have kitchens, their bathrooms were just stone stacks in a squared shape to cover the view and their toilet is a hole in the ground. We produce resources for all these parts of a house but they cost separately for each part. The bathroom has its own price as does the kitchen and a single room. These people undergo several days of rain and have too much to worry about. Our collective ideas were to get the whole house reconstructed and made out of stone slabs and cement based floors.

 Food supply was also low within this village. As you can see in this picture with the pigs, its their food resource. Our school enables us to follow some of the IB learner profile methods with everything we do. As a group we take risks for the people who need the help and deserve a better life. Reconstructing houses is the best start because they need to be able to feel safe in the confines of their own living area and that is what we aim to do as a Service group. Change! people want it but not many can have it due to their economical problems. For people like this we do them a favour by giving them something, we have everything we need now its time to give something to those who need it.

• Food supply 
• Protection 
• Shelter