Friday, January 17, 2014

TFC Children's Street Centre Visit

    On the 12th of December, me and my service group visited the Children's Street Center, which is a center who shelters 42 children between the ages as low as 5 to as high as 17, who have been abandoned by their parents for different reasons. Therefore we thought it would be possible that these children have been or taken part in the sex industry in Sri Lanka, and thought it would be appropriate to help and educate them on, not the subject directly as that would raise concerns (considering our ethical actions), but their safety in general (engaged in issues of global importance).
     Although,we discussed early, that it would be too straightforward and too concerning to immediately educate them on safety, and that we should form a type of friendship bond with the children, so they trust us more and realize who we are (considering our ethical actions). Therefore we planned and initiated on visiting them every month or so to build a bond and be able to help them every so often. Eventually, we agreed on having an 'Arts and Crafts Day' for our first visit, thinking this was a good idea for bonding (planned and initiated activities).
    For the Arts and Crafts Day we decided to have three sections of various arts and crafts; a finger painting mural, making Christmas cards, and making 3D christmas trees and other physical crafts, and all the stations were well balanced in terms of the number of kids, making all craft stations a huge success, and I even got to use my language skills to use (sinhala) to communicate with them, which without doubt made a more friendlier relationship (worked collaboratively with others).
    After the activities were finished we said goodbye to our newly made friends, and asked whether they enjoyed it and whether we could come again; all of them said "yes." Making all the members of TFC feel good about, not only themselves, but realizing that the future of TFC is confirmed, with the center and TFC in general (increased awareness in areas for growth and improvement).

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