And this children is how I met your mother…ok I am kidding.

But what I am about to tell you is a journey of epic significance. So sit back, grab a cuppa, maybe a comfy cushion and that doughnut you have been eyeing for the past hour and read on.

This is how it began, the awesome experience with the SOS Children’s Village but of course, I’m getting ahead of myself. You see in the beginning I didn’t even plan for SOS Village, I had a different plan entirely, something not even on the same avenue as Community Service.

PROLOGUE

This initially started off in a board meeting, when I suggest to hold a Secret Santa from the Club that involved the entire district, each person who signed up could be part of the SS Program and they’d be given a partner from the district and they would get/receive gifts.

As you can read from the above description, it had nothing to do with community service in the beginning, I wanted a project that would make our members more active and social in the district

When I brought this up, Zayan asked me to chair it, well that was only fair, if you have an idea, you might as well see it through

So the next day I started to think how this project would work and how it would pan out, for this I needed a team, so I started to think of my team and how they would work.

THE TEAM

My team was made of members who were inactive (they couldn’t come for meetings because of work and other commitments, some could not come for projects because of the times they were held and others due to the time meetings were held)

So I wanted to try this new strategy, to do a project with all these members, to make them feel involved, but the idea was not force them to a meeting, I wanted to make them feel that this was not going to be a burden to them

So I asked each other them to handle a small responsibility. And based on how busy they were I decided whether it was going to be a physical task or a logistic task.

I contacted Isharini, Kanchana, Sara, Sherangi and Nipuna in that order and asked all of them if they are comfortable in helping out for this project, they all said OK, and I formed the Secret Santa Whats App Group.

Oh but wait by the end of this task project by committee had grown into a pretty large crowd of active members, I think I inspired a few to serve more.

We kicked off, by trying to short list an orphanage with 20/30 kids because naturally I wanted to take baby steps, we eventually looked around and found a few potential places. Dina was extremely helpful in that area. She handled all the calls to the places and got back to us with the responses.

Dina finally suggested me SOS Village, that count of children there was way beyond what I wanted to handle 137 kids!!, I initially wanted to say no. We had history with SOS, our Rotaract District had done projects with the Nuwara Eliya Village and the Jaffna Village in the past few years.

DINA’S PUSH

She convinced me to go ahead with them because they a very professional organization with quite a long history. SOS Village initially formed after the World War 2, in light of all the families that have lost their parents with the aim of forming villages of kids, with designated mothers that took care of each house.

It took a long time to get them on board, with a few emails going up and down but we finally manged to get the green light!!! And they were as Dina promised a very professional organization.

I wrote to them and then called them up and go in contact with Mr Hettige, who was a very nice person to communicate with. I asked permission to visit them over the coming weeks, he was very positive about the project. We initially planned on the 27th and pulled the date to the 26th, although he did say that there may not be enough staff to help out with the event.

SARA AND ISHARINI

I asked both of them to come up with an agenda for a half day and full day event in case there were changes that need to be done to the timeline. We would have a back up agenda no matter what the situation. They did a brilliant job. They got back to me in two days with a good details of events and even who was responsible for each event.

Sara and Isharaini could not make it to the event however, but we’re so glad they could help out on the planning of the event.

THE FIRST VISIT

I wanted to visit the Village ahead of time and scope out what we can do there. I was accompanied by Vinavie from the Rotaract Club of ACBT and she was so helpful. A special shout out to her for coming along, and we were also accompanied by a prospective Rotaractor called Twinkle as she lived near by. They both came along for a bus ride into what we didn’t know would be monumental.

We initially ended up getting lost in Mount Lavinia (I know, no where near Kesbewa!), but ended up picking Twinkle on the way and visiting the orphanage. We were greeted by a security guard, who then introduced us to a woman in the front office, who was due in 6 weeks (Editor: this seems like too much detail but I liked the fact that the writer paid so much attention, so this part stays).

She offered to take us around to visit, I felt bad because she was pregnant, but she insisted and we went around on a small visit to the village. For those who don’t know about this is a quick introduction. The village has 15 houses with each house having around 10 kids, which totals to about 150 children. But then certain house were empty, and therefore we had only 137 kids to work with.

We spent about an hour there and she handed a list of all the children and there basic details, including ages, school grades for the next year, etc.

THE SECOND VISIT

I visited the Village on my own a few days later to get additional details from the kids about their interests and their Christmas wishes. I got hear some of the stories that the kids had to tell and the wishes, but even with that effort I could not manage to get all the kids wishes. I plan to start this much ahead next year, so that we have a better understanding of the children.

NAFLI’S IDEA

The final drive for this project came from an idea by Nafli.  Nafli has a knack with coming up with genius ideas that can really give impetus to put any project into motion. Nafli and I met in December, at a Mc Donald’s on Race Course and Salman, joined us and pitched in during the conversation. Nafli wanted to make it an interactive event where the kid’s get to meet their Secret Santa.

While I already had the idea in mind, I was more caught up in the reality “what if we don’t get enough gifts?!”, so I wanted him to come on board, because he would have a clear focus on bringing attendees, and I would focus on getting the gifts.

In the end it worked out exactly as planned, Nafli ended up bringing 65% of all the Secret Santa attendees.

GIFT COLLECTION CAMPAIGN BEGINS

At 4:44 PM on a typical Tuesday (13th Dec) Nafli posted and created the event. We posted a few posts on Facebook and the collection began at a snail’s pace as expected, with all of my team looking for friends to help out. We eventually got 44 Santa’s in the first two days, which was breath of fresh air. Nipuna also sponsored an entire house and got us one more sponsor on the first day itself.

We started setting targets for each day. We targeted18 gifts per day as that’s what we needed to find each day to get the project in motion. On the second day Dilip brought in enough people to sponsor an entire house.

Sherangi brought in people as well while Sara and Kanchana brought in so many gifts. It was truly a team collaboration and everyone on the group soon started to feel the Christmas magic.

GIFT COLLECTION ADVENTURE

When the time came to collect gifts, I had been tasked to collect some gifts and buy some other gifts as well. There so many places in Colombo I ended up going, including Galle Face to collect Hiruni and her Sisters and Leonita’s gifts and into an Air Force Base to collect Bashini’s Gift.

BUMPS ALONG THE ROAD

Initially Nafli requested ZJ to create a few videos for this project. These videos would consist of celebrities endorsing this project and inviting for others to share the joy of giving over the season. ZJ delivered as promised but we made the mistake of not uploading them on time. This meant that they were unused and ZJ was not very happy about this. He had a few sharp words to say to us but we took it in the right spirit and in the final moments of the project we uploaded them on Facebook.

The reason for this delay was that Nafli and I thought that we could use organic promotions such as word of mouth to encourage people to pledge to donate for this project and once the Secret Santas were on board we wanted to use the videos to keep the momentum going for a bigger project.

THE SS FAMILY GROWS

Towards the end I added Safwan & Anjuna. I brought them on board not for gifts collection but because of their special interests. Shafwan wanted to help with sports and Anjuna seems very interested in music.

I added Twinkle to the group as well because she helped during the initial stages of the project and I knew she had it in her to support in a much bigger way for the project and she did.

SETTING UP THE TREE

THE PLAN

I wanted to surprise the kids with an announcement saying we are coming and what better way than to wait till the kids are all asleep and set up a Christmas tree?!? So I started looking around a tree

Roshanthi came into the picture for this(side fact, on the phone her name auto corrects to Corinthians “Let all that you do be done in love”). Well I asked her to help me find a tree. It was one task, but a big task, because I wanted it to be huge so that the kids would spot the tree immediately. How huge you wonder? Well at least 6 or 7 foot tall.

Eventually she ended up buying a tree, bless her soul, even though she was not even there for the event because she was in India on the day of the event.

THE JOURNEY

On the 24th day, I was going around Colombo collecting gifts. I had just finished collecting gifts from Christopher and Amritsar. I was waiting for Dimuthu to deliver his gift at Colombo 03 on the road side, with the clock ticking and getting impatient. Finally he came with his gift for the kid that I assigned him with and then I hurried for to get the tree.

I had to transport the tree from Athul Kotte to Kesbawa, wham Nipuna to the rescue! He offered to transport the tree with me and set it up as well, this despite the fact that his close friend’s mother from the facility had passed away, that was truly a help for me.

THE SETUP

This is where I met Mr. Dammika, a very pleasant looking man to go with the voice I have been conversing with for weeks.

THE DAY OF CHRISTMAS (NOT THE EVENT DAY)

I started day visiting an Airport Base to collect a gift, then hung around Ratmalana waiting for Kanisha, whilst planning how to get food and what to get them. I had already bought the Milk Packets ahead of time as I am one of those people who can never be comfortbale until everything is all bought and ready.

We got a last minute sponsor by ZJ’s Wife’s Mother (ZJ’s Mother in Law) and it was the best thing to ever happen, because we were going to buy food and then when this happened the budgets finally settled in.

I finally went home and started packing all the gifts and wrapping everything that was not wrapped.

I also got Kanchana’s gifts and Sherangi’s gifts as well, then got yellow garbage bags full of gifts and prepared them for each house, in case we have no time to give the gifts hand to hand at least they are arranged according to the kids.

Dinithi’s gift were with her and she was at the venue by 8 with all her cool gifts, she is truly the most down to earth “Dinithi” I’ve met so far .

SANTA FINALLY ARRIVES

MIDTOWNERS BEING EARLY

I just had to put this one out there because, it was a moment to remember when Dina and Twinkle went ahead of me. They were present at 06:00 when we showed up at 6:45, almost the entire team of people were present at the venue early. I don’t know what made that happen but I want it to happen again, maybe I’m jinxing it right now by typing it.

THE ACTIVITIES BEGIN

We started the events with three simultaneous events, and then moved on to the next three, by which time the public members started to join us. The event as fun for us as it was fun for them.

THE MEMBERS POURED IN

We got Sasmin and her brother, and his friend, Oshadha and entire ACBT family including Nethmee and Nirmitha to come in, and finally Aneez to come in, he gave all his books to a girl who’s going to do her A/Ls, it was amazing!

We also had participation from Roar.LK, Group M and Many other particpants from the public. The Rotary Club of Colombo also participated in numbers including the Rotary Club President Hussain Fazly Abbass and the youngest Community Service Director in the club’s history so far: Rotarian Arshad

THE GIFT GIVING BEGINS

This was the moment my heart started to throb, because I was worried now .

Would the kids like the gifts people got?

Did we get enough,?

What if one was left out?

Well when I truly looked into it, there was nothing to worry about, because I had an amazing team that helped me. I was sure that gifts were ready, and that there was enough gifts, but I can’t explain the butterfly feeling you get with all that in your mind.

EPILOGUE

We thank all our Secret Santas and the people who came with us. There is an innumerable amount of people who came to be a part of this project and we would like to you to join us for our next projects as well.

Here is a shout out to all of our sponsors, Santas and helps. We salute you in name and spirit, thank you so much!

Thamesha Tennakoon, Ayushka Nugaliyaddha/Amila Amunupura, Sachi Ediriweera, Delukshe Fernando, Amristar Wickramaratana, Darshatha Gamage, Mario Isuru Ayesmantha, Isuri Mendis, Sasmini Bandara, , Methmini, Randima, ⁠⁠⁠Chathu, Venu, Kanisha, IIT, Ruth, , Sandun Fernando, Lozaine Perera, Zulaika, Charya Gamlath, Achini Palawatte, Anuradha Senanayake, Nethmee, Diayana Thresha, Malki, Naomi Jacob , , Dimuthu Ponnamperuma, Tashika Madushanka, Sahan, Sahan, Sahan, Sajani, Leonita Rishnie Fernandopulle, Tharu Sen, Lukshan Bandara, , , Hafsa Kamar, Sajani, Masatoe, Vipuli Perera, Kanishka, Kokila Perera Amaraweera, Masatoe, , Janitha Jeewantha Ranawansa, Bimandi De Mel, , Paperella , Vinod Madushanka, Sabir Marikar, Kailash, Akhila Adhishwara, Naduni, (Nuluka Sun), Mandree Kaumadhi, Naduni, Dinithi, Naduni, Hashini, Naduni, Dharshini, , Aneez, Sandun Fernando, Mayukha, Thamali Elayadurage, Damien Paul, Nadun senevirathne, Upuli Imalka Vithana, Leoni Senanayake, Sanjeewa De Silva, , Dilisha, Shenali, Mahen, Kasun, Dilip, Sajan, Annemarie, Madhu Wijeysuriya, Brintha, Wayan, , Afraa Mohamed, Shakina Hatim, Dinithi Kumarasiri, Malinda Dharmasiri, Kamani Jayawardana, Therese Fernando, Tharaka De Silva, Nirosha Abeyrathna, Sumudu Kumarasiri, Sevini , Keyan Gisadh, Vinavie, Chang, , Lahiru semasinghe, , Anjana Jevon, Gauri abeysinghe, Nishali Kashra Fernando, Delanka Sahabandu, Shamitha Hettige, Sathi, Ravindi Walisinghe, , Bashini Pathirana, Abdul Baasith, Abdul Razzzak, Maneesha Abeyarathne/Brindha, Raj, Raj, Anna Jayasiri, Sudakshi De Zoysa, , Sandun Fernando, Afshaan Mohamed, Giovanni Fernando, Osanda Wijesundara, Yadushika Radhakrishnan, Promodha, Vidyas, , Warren Manul, Spencer pereira, Shevin , Sachini goonethilaka, Shafwan , Udeni , ⁠⁠⁠Praba , ⁠⁠⁠Praba , Thilini Leeniyagolla, , Prashanthi Perumal, Hansani, Priyanka, Abhinaya , Rishini Jayarathna, Raj, Tharani Karunaratne

Organized by Miyuru and Nafli

Written by Miyuru

Edited by Roshanthi