25 - 29 January 2010.
Hambantota, Sri Lanka.
We spent three days working in a pre-school in the area of Hambantota in the south-east of the island. There, we painted everything from the playground equipment to every wall that could possibly be painted on this one-room school; no wall was too high for us. We also spent the first half hour of each day playing with the children. On the last day, when all the work was completed, there was a performance, where we performed for them and they performed for us.
Goals:
- to re-paint and clean the school, so as to make a better environment for the children to learn in.
- to re-paint all the playground equipment outside, so that it looks almost new.
- to play with the children.
- give the children art supplies - books, crayons.
- finish the work and then come up with a performance for the children.
OUTCOME:
We managed to achieve all the things that we aimed to, and more. When we were first introduced to the project, I thought that it would just be another paint job, go in, go out. Three days of hard-work. I felt that we worked brilliantly as a team - we managed to get the majority of the walls done on the first day as well as most of the paint on the equipment. I think that also, through this teamwork, we became, to some extent, closer as a grade, having to work with people that we had never worked with before. However, the one outcome of this project that I had not thought through fulIy was that I never really thought about how happy it would make these children. I never imagined the smiles on their, as well as their parents' faces at the crayons, the paper, the clean walls and floor, the paint on the equipment; the giggles and the astonishment at the performances; the work that they put into their performance; the way that they waved us good-bye at the end. This was when I realised: this is what it feels like to change a small part of someone's world. Possibly the most amazing feeling. Something that I had felt before, but never truly understood until that moment.
