At the International Gold Event held in Mauritius from Oct. 12 -23, 2008, we spent two full days involved in community service projects. We had three different projects to chose from including Building homes, Cleaning up a Bird Sanctuary, or Helping at a Women’s Detox Centre. I chose to be a part of the Women’s Detox Centre as it involved cleaning up the grounds around the building, painting a mural on the wall, and putting in a garden for the women to tend. We had about 30 people on our project and spent a good portion of the morning on the first day just cleaning up the front yard and repainting the wall white. Then two people did outline drawings on the wall of flowers and butterflies (which the centre wanted) as a starting place for the mural. Then it was a flurry of painting. It was a little bit of controlled chaos as each person had a slightly different idea of how the mural should look, but by the end of the first day we had most of the mural complete. We were all extremely hot and tired by the end of the day as the temperature was it’s highest yet.
The women who were living at the shelter also had their children with them. The women and their children were so excited to see us and they all chipped in to help with cleaning up the yard. The children were also excited to paint. They required some supervision and sometimes the language barrier was a bit of an issue but it made for a fun and enjoyable time for themselves and for us. The children really clung to some of us and were sad to see us leave after two full days of interaction with lots of people around.
The second day the team divided into two groups - one smaller group of 4 people that worked on finishing up the mural and the other group put in a new garden in the back yard. I was one of the people that worked on finishing the mural and one of the main things we noticed was that from where we started and were the mural finished around the corner it looked completely different. We decided to try and make it flow a bit better and spent most of our time fixing that up. The group at the back spent their time digging up the soil, putting in a trench for the water to flow through, and seeding and watering the garden. It was so neat to be able to help in these ways. The women and children at the centre were very appreciative.
This past winter, a number of delegates decided to send small gifts to the centre for Christmas. Unfortunately they were a little late to arrive but they were well received. Putting your time into a project like this can really have a large impact not only on the lives of the people there but also on your own life. I often think back to the women and children at the shelter and how different their lives are from my own. They are often in my thoughts and I will never forget the feeling I had as I left - seeing the mural and the garden and smiling faces of the women and children.
In the evenings throughout IGE, each regional area was asked to do a presentation about their country and the Award in their country. There are 4 regional areas – The Americas, Asia-Pacific, EMAS (Europe, Mediterranean, and Arab States), and Africa. The first night was The Americas Region which had delegates from Canada, Guyana, and St. Lucia. I will tell you all about the evenings in the next post.
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- Painting the mural
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- Building a home
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- Putting in the garden
