“We rise by lifting others”

Nenasa; the signature community services project by the Rotaract Club of University of Kelaniya strikes again. We brought up the aesthete inside school children with our 01^st phase. 2^nd phase is a teaching programme for school children which is still on the move. 3^rd phase was a counselling programme consisting two sessions that came out beautifully.

As the Rotaract Club of University of Kelaniya, we’ve had an aim. An aim to reach school children through a different approach. The project was initialized to help students of Wedamulla Maha Vidyalaya, Kelaniya who deal with social, personal, family, gender, educational and sexual problems. The psychological and physical boundary between a teacher and a student differs. It does not come out handy with each student. Therefore, most of the questions remain unsolved. We’ve identified the need to make a better environment. Counselling is not an easy task. We trained ourselves and gained the technical procedure in counselling.

The 01^st session was held on 14^th of October at University of Kelaniya. It was a training session which was conducted by Prof. Gamini Hapuarachchi. He is a psychologist and a senior professor in psychology. Above all, he is a well-trained counselor which helped us a lot to stay professional in this worthy course. After a discussion between professor and Rotaractors, session was framed to two practical sessions with three steps.

Professor taught us the A-Z process in counselling within the discussion. We’ve had a vast knowledge on concepts such as counselor’s body language, counselee’s physical reactions, summarizing, diagnosing, paraphrasing, showing empathy and so forth.

After that, practical sessions started. A Rotaractor acted as a counselee and professor showed us how to act in front of him. Throughout the whole session our eyes were on professor because it’s his role we must follow in near future. He took three different incidents and counseled while asking us how we did the diagnosis. We were taught that reactions should differ regarding the incident and age of the counselee.

After the lunch break, 2^nd practical session started. In this session, both counselor and counselee were Rotaractors. Our mistakes were corrected by the professor. We’ve understood that the slightest facial expressions from a counselor can lead to a failure in counselling process. 17 Rotaractors participated while 6 non Rotaractors marked their presence. They’ve had a lifetime experience and made them feel confident for the next step.

Session 2 started on a bright Wednesday morning. Rotaractors went to Wedamulla Maha Vidyalaya on 25^th of October for a counselling session. Prof. Gamini Hapuarachchi gave a splendid start by talking with students from grade 6 to grade 11. After that we started to counsel them with the knowledge we gained. Within three hours (10AM-2PM) we managed to counsel more than 100 students.

It was challenging but as Rotaractors we made it a success. Being a Rotaractor is all about breaking barriers and overcoming challenges. Once again Nenasa has shown us our capabilities to make the world a better place.

-Rtr. Thisaranie Wijayabandara