CAS for the month of April

In April i was still recuperating from malaria and was not allowed to take part in any physical activities for the month. So i spent time working on developing my guitar skills and managed to post two videos on YouTube. I was also busy planning the Fundraising part for the cleft palate service.

Cleft Palate Fundraiser: "Aloha Hawaii"
Cleft Palate is a serious problem faced by newborn children that can cause life-long impairments in speaking and facial deformities. It is caused by abnormal facial development during the gestation period of a fetus.It causes discomfort and difficulties with speech. In Sri Lanka there are quite a few children affected by this who go without any kind of surgery and are forced to live with the problem because they cannot afford the cost of the surgery. This community service helps raise money for these surgeries and donates them to a hospital that brings a Doctor from London every year to perform these operations. Last year our group contributed 210,000 rupees towards the operations of these children. Each surgery costs about 15000 rupees , so we managed to finance quite a few surgeries. Though the group is called "The Cleft Palate organization" we finance surgeries for Cleft Lip and Cleft Palate both. The following are images depicting the two deformities:

In April, The fundraising party was held in the Taj Samudra hotel but it did not go as well as planned. At the last minute there were quite a few problems faced by our group and there were some issues raised by the school administration on the day of the party that needed to be taken care of urgently. After overcoming all problems the turnout was still quite disappointing. A lot of people who had promised to come did not show up.Even the previous leaders of the group, who were supposed to come and bring their grade did not do so. Therefore the turnout was pretty poor and so were the funds raised. A total of 30,000 rupees were raised out of which fee had to be payed to the DJ as well as the hired security. In the end the sum total deposited into the account for the Cleft Palate organization was just about 20,000 rupees. We were also unable to make a visit to the hospital like we had done in December because exams were fast approaching and the bus to take us to the hospital was very busy. Also the doctor who would take us to meet the children was out of town.  after the party we spent the last few sessions deciding on what we do in the next year to raise funds as well as decided that we would try to make a trip to the hospital once in every one or two months.

Guitar 
I focused a lot on developing my guitar skills this month and i managed to do a performance on stage with Camie in the final assembly of the school year as well as upload two videos on YouTube. For the assembly we performed a special song for Mr. Coles, our secondary school principal since it was his last assembly at this school. We did a piece by Nelly Furtado.

There was a Rock concert organised at school for which me and a few of my friends auditioned. This would be my first official audition at OSC for a concert which shows i like to undertake new challenges. Sadly we didnt not have any time to rehearse and therefore were not selected to perform in the show. 

The two videos i Posted on YouTube were both guitar solo's from famous songs. One was from "Nothing else matters"by metallica and the other was "Warmness of the Soul" by Avenged Sevenfold. I have been playing guitar for the past 3 years now and have never thought of giving it up because of academic or athletic pressures. This shows my commitment and perseverance  in all my activities whether they are creative or  action related. It also shows that i undertake challenges because these are my first ever videos of guitar solo's. My previous videos where mainly rhythm guitar. I still have a long way to go before i can call myself a true guitarist but im determined to get there. Here are the two videos i posted :