Project ‘Equity Redefined’ was an initiative of the Rotaract Club of Kandy Metropolitan alongside “Building Bridges” which is also a volunteer organization. This particular organization focuses mainly on projects done based on their own field work Research. The volunteers at building bridges have a great knowledge of talking to victims of problems we don’t talk about much these days.
The session started off with and interactive session among the member and the co-founders of building bridges, where everyone introduced themselves and trued to identify the purpose they are in a volunteer organization such as Rotaract. The session was then taken over by the founder of Building Bridges Ms Dilshani addressing our members about what we should look into when we are planning a project. She emphasized on how projects can be carried out even with a small budget but still make a huge impact on our society. Furthermore, the session included a few activities conducted by the co-director of building bridges Ms Tiffany for the members where real-life incidents were given out and the members were supposed to justify the problem and come up with the solutions. An ice breaker session was also conducted prior to this with a balloon and tooth pick activity to identify the way our own members think. This added more energy to the session.
The session mainly focused on areas such as child abuse, online blackmailing and reason for the increase in the number of underage sex workers in our country. This gave our very own members a knowledge about what problems are faced in a society and why people are led to do things as such. Moreover, we were also given the knowledge to what sort of problems people of our age face due to lack of education and protection around them. We were given details of officials we can meet and advise people to be referred over to when facing such problems. Further, we were provided with the knowledge of how people can get vocational trainings to develop their skills which will help them to get their self-placed in jobs. They also advised us on how to identify the real needs of a person. For an example, they said if a school is asking for donations, giving the kid a water bottle is not the post important as its not sustainable. The sustainable thing to do would be giving access to clean water, so setting up filters would help all kids and teachers in the school to have access to clean water.
The session ended with each one giving their feedback on how useful this session was. Rtr. Jude concluded the session by thanking and giving out the souvenirs to the 2 invited guests. The session ran up to about 3 hours but everyone was well focused and got the best out of it.
