Titans X - Titan Games - Rac Excellence

As a new member of a Rotaract Club, I got this golden opportunity to be a part of the first community service battle in Sri Lanka named Titans Games organized by the Rotaract Club of Pearl Island. The event required the teams to complete as many community service projects as possible in 14 days. I was part of a team which comprised 15 members representing the Club. This platform provided a chance to serve our community as a team. A range of brilliant ideas from each group member helped to incorporate several projects in 14 days.

Through each project, we targeted a wide variety of focus groups. Our first project was a beach clean-up called “Rise above the trash”. This project was conducted in three phases targeting two different locations which are, Crow-Island beach and Dehiwala beach. We started the project after a few days of heavy rainfall. Therefore, the coastal area was highly polluted with plastic bottles. The plastic bottles were collected into garbage bags and were handed over to respective staff and these pollutants were collected by Coca-Cola.

The plastic bottles collected were weighed by Coca-Cola, to our surprise the plastic collected at Crow Island beach weighed approximately 37 kgs and the plastic collected at Dehiwala beach weighed approximately 32 kgs and I could not believe myself the level of waste that’s put out to the environment. It was my first time participating in a beach clean-up project so I felt that this was an initiative that was very much needed in our society. Our next two projects were “Mealshare” and “Zerowaste” which we did parallel together.

We initially saved up plastic bottles which we use at home and we disposed them at the Trash2Cash machine at Keells supermarket at Union Place, then we used the credits to buy food for the needy and distributed them to the homeless around Colombo. This project focused on creating awareness on the best possible way to dispose of plastic bottles. The next project called “Hunger-no-more” was done with help of a partnership with a restaurant. We received free meal parcels provided by a restaurant named “Chooty’s” and provided them to the homeless and the social workers around Colombo.

The next project had two phases. For the first phase, we helped to clean and sanitize the library of the Maharagama Cancer Hospital library and for the second phase, we donated books for children at a home. On the last day of project completion of Titan Games, we had an event called “Titans X” in which five members from the team had to complete as many projects as possible in 8 hours. Some challenges were given by the organizing committee as well. With the help of other members helping as to digitally spread awareness of our projects, we were able to complete 10 projects in 480 minutes. Some projects were extended as part of our existing projects. However, there were some new project ideas that we successfully pulled it off within the timeline. Some of the projects included tree planting, feeding stray animals, creating awareness videos on how to correctly dispose of the mask, and the 20-second handwash method. All the projects were shared on social media platforms to raise awareness.

The End Game was the finale of the event where all the teams were acknowledged, and awards were presented for winning teams. Overall, this whole project helped us to strengthen our community’s goodwill. Personally, this was an interesting experience for me as a Rotaractor as well as a citizen of this country.