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.