Final Reflection: SOS Orphanage

At the beginning of the year, I set out to achieve four goals for service. These are:

• Prove that I can follow the examples of the leaders in SOS Orphanage and achieve tasks with my best effort applied to them. Then, reflect on my experiences and of all the self accomplishments in the service sessions.
• Formulate my own service activity either in school or outside, or take up a leadership role in an already existing service activity.
• When the second goal has been accomplished; reflect on my first days' work as a leader as well as prove that I am capable enough to continue my leadership role.
• Reflect on my overall experience of service work by the end of this year and show how I have grown as a service volunteer as well as how it has affected me.

Unfortunately, I wasn't able to accomplish the second and third goals as specified by the goals. However, I was able to take up a leadership role in an after-school activity; Cricket. Since this activity does not involve helping the community in need but rather providing a service students in our school, this activity only falls under the creativity aspect of CAS. But even though I did not take up a service leadership role, I'm still proud that I took up a leadership role. This is something I have never done before and so it was a great experience for me. I learnt to take more responsibility in to my hands as well as learnt to collaborate with my fellow co-leaders. I carried out my leadership role for the entire semester. The kids were always very enthusiastic to play Cricket and their favorite was doing the high catches practices (besides the match at the end). Overall I felt that it was a great learning experience and has definitely helped me out for my future. 

I strongly believe that I have accomplished my first goal. During the service sessions I learnt to communicate better with kids much younger than me as well as developed my English and Math teaching skills. I feel that I really tried my best during during swimming sessions. One of my favorite moments was when I was able to get a kid to swim complete laps, when before he wouldn't even stay away from the pool edge because he was scared of the water. This happened in just 2 lessons. He and I both tried our best to make it happen. 

Service at OSC has been a great experience for me. I took part in two service activities, Recycling and Sustainability and SOS Orphanage. In both activities I met amazing people and we all worked collaboratively to achieve all that we set out to do. Given the fact that this was the first time I have ever taken part in a service activity at a school, I feel that I have accomplished a lot during these two years of service.