Count on me

It was a simple random thought but, it was not allowed to remain so - to help some friends in need! To provide breakfast for 120 school children!

Hewagama Junior School is a small primary school quite close to us. We came to know about the school and their hardships through our parents. But then again, how could we, five students in Year 5, provide food for 120?

Plan

All we needed was a plan. We made a group in MS Teams and started to plan out things. We discussed, and little by little pieces of the puzzle started to fall into place. Later on, we named the group ‘Count on me’. We worked towards a common goal in unity.

Collecting money

We needed money and we wanted to earn it. So, we all did household chores and our parents gave us around 50 rupees per chore. Then we saved some of our pocket money too. We had four months to collect money. At the end of the academic year, we also sold old text books to collect money. In four months’ time we had collected around 6,000 rupees each.

Menu

We deliberated a lot on the menu, especially about the dessert. It was a close contest between ice-cream and yoghurt. But we finally agreed on yoghurt as it was easy to transport and people are usually not fussy about it.

So, our menu was,

Vegetable fried rice Devilled chicken Dhal curry Papadam Yoghurt

Shopping day

We made a shopping list with the help of Ms. Maduwanthi, the school chef. Uncle Nirosh, Nethuli’s father was so nice and agreed to drive us around. We bought all the essentials from four different shops and later that evening we handed over the stuff to the school chef. She was overjoyed to see lots of food, as the school had real difficulties in feeding the children.

The big day

August 18, 2022 was the big day. We went to the school early in the morning. As we are all studying at an international school, this was during our vacation. We joined their morning assembly and they surprised us with small speeches like, ‘My pet’, ‘My family’, dialogues and poems in English. We also sang the song ‘Budhanu Bhavena Sith Neth Pahanvee’.

After that we served food to the Grade One students. First, they were a bit shy, but soon they got used to us. The principal took us all around the school and she appreciated us a lot. It was a small school with only 5 classrooms and 7 teachers. We had lots of fun with our new friends.

Hours later we left the school taking lots of good memories with us.

A big thank you to;

Ms. Kanthi Liyanage – The principal of Hewagama Kanishta Vidyalaya

Ms. Maduwanthi – The chef – for making a delicious meal Uncle Nirosh – For patiently driving us all over the village to buy groceries

Our parents – For helping us out whenever we were in trouble

A good deed hidden in silence dies away with time.

So, we wanted to pass our light to others, so they can pass it to many more!