By Nirukshi de Lanerolle
Programme Coordinator
I was excited when I was informed that Emerge was going to conduct a workshop at the Galle Children’s Festival. We had to prepare to teach 75 girls (in groups of 25) at 3 different times during 1 day. As this was the first time I had attended this festival, I was only informed that the participants were between 12-16 years old.
We arrived in Galle the day prior to the festival, I was asked by the organizers to help in the transport of the volunteers from Colombo to Galle and back. I felt very important, as I had this list of volunteers who had to be picked up on our way to Galle. When we arrived at the hotel, I had to meet the hotel staff and arrange for the volunteers to be assigned to their rooms.
On the next day, we were taken to the venue, where all the workshops were going to be held. There were thousands of school children who had come to attend the workshops that were been conducted by different groups of volunteers, there were theatre, arts and crafts, pottery, storytelling, music workshops. Sections of different age groups of children attended them; it was so nice to see that there were children from the village schools who mingled with the children from the international schools all from the southern province.
The girls enjoyed the card making and the bracelet-making activity we at Emerge carried out. While Udani helped me, I had Iresha, who was with us in the programme, who volunteered to help us. We also had Brianne Holmbeck visiting us from Massachusetts who helped us during the workshops.
We, the Emerge team, enjoyed ourselves very much being part of the Galle Children’s Festival 2012!