Community Service Project Report
Painting La Confirmation, a Public School
Zahra Botembo
(MYP5)
11 MARCH 2024
ECOLE INTERNATIONALE ARC EN CIEL LOME-TOGO
School year : 2023-2024
1/ Personal description of the community service:
Our class community service project was to
paint the walls of a public school named “La
confirmation” located in Lome,Togo’s
district Nyekonakpoe. The service project
took place on Saturday, March 9th, 2024
from 8:00am -12:00 pm. The project was
done with my MYP5 class consisting of
Sarah, Somalia, Jasmeh, Noyal, Kanishk,
Raghav, Amira, Nifemi, and Rameez. As
well as, PEI4 another class below our grade
of 8 students who came to help. Four supervisors came as well, [Link], [Link],
[Link], and [Link], they did not participate in the painting though they just watched over
us. Except [Link] who helped in the paint preparations.
We chose to paint this school as they were not as fortunate as our private school to acquire the
proper resources to paint their school to provide a proper learning environment for the students.
We took initiative to take some time out of our day to help create a better learning environment
and help out the painters.
2 / Personal description of the community service:
To start off, our class had to take 2 separate groups on the bus from our school, Arc-en-Ciel, to
“La Confirmation” , the public school, because there was not enough space. Luckily, the drive was
only 5 minutes so it did not take long. I went with the 2nd group. When we arrived at La
Confirmation, the 1st group had already started mixing the paints. The school wanted the walls to
be sort of a light gray color. So there were about 5-10 buckets filled with white paint, water, and
some black paint to create the gray color. However, we had to mix the paint with our bare
hands/arms since they did not have any mixing tools. I personally got to mix one bucket of paint
for about 6 minutes and the texture felt really weird.
Once all the paints were done being mixed, everyone got to painting. We were all given
brushes/rollers to paint the cemented brick walls. The painting part of this service project was
pretty easy for me, the application was straight forward. I just dipped the brushes in the paint
buckets and kept applying paint to the wall until it looked fully covered and even in coats. Majority
of the walls we painted were not very tall, maybe around 5 '7-6'ft. A lot of the students had gray
paint all over them once the project was finished. When we finished painting the cemented walls,
we cleaned up by filling the paint buckets with water from a water faucet available outside to wash
the paint brushes, paint rollers and paint buckets.
Although, I will say during the painting one aspect that was difficult was painting the small indents
in the wall since the wall was not evenly flat. Even though the brick wall was cemented there were
certain areas where the brick had broken off creating small holes in the wall. So in order to fully
paint the wall we had to use smaller brushes to reach these holes to not leave blank unpainted
spaces. Overall as a class, the final painted walls looked really good and proved that as a team
a lot can be accomplished.
3 / Reflection (report) and learning objectives:
During this community service project I was able to :
a/ Identify the strengths and develop the areas to be improved:
Strengths: A strength this community project service had was our ability to work as a team.
Painting multiple school walls alone can be a tedious task but with the help of 17 people it went
by in a flash. We were all contributing to different areas of walls at the same time, which helped
by getting a lot of space painted in a shorter period of time.
Weaknesses: A weakness I personally faced during this community service project was my
attention span during painting. While painting I definitely was not putting my full attention into it. I
continued to stop after about 10 minutes of painting to walk around, take a break, or talk. This
affected my connection/seriousness to the project, as I did not really grasp the importance of our
actions during the project. Even though I did contribute to painting the school’s walls, I definitely
could have done more to help or at least put more effort.
b / Demonstrate that the challenges were met and that they are the source of new skills:
This community service project did not really bring a lot of challenges. The only difficult aspect I
faced was being unfamiliar with painting walls or dealing with paint in this sense prior to the
project, so it was a new experience for me. In order to do the project our class only needed to
request our coordinators to validate our project proposal and choose a date, which was fairly
easy. Regarding the actual painting part, as I already mentioned I had never painted before so it
took me a while to adjust to the technique. However, this project helped me gain new experiences
such as the preparations done before painting, painting walls, and how to mix paint. Without
forgetting the collaboration skills I developed through this community service project, while
working with others.
c/ Demonstrate perseverance and commitment toward the experience:
As a class, we made sure to submit our project proposal on time and make sure it got validated.
Our class delegate, Sarah, continued to submit ideas despite the prior refusals until this project
finally got validated by the coordinators. The day of the community service project all of us made
sure to come on time to school, which the majority of us did. At “La Confirmation”, (the public
school) everyone participated and played their role of painting the school’s walls. Luckily, that day
it was not very hot outside as it was cloudy, so this prevented any possible issues concerning the
heat. Overall, I would say that we were committed to the project and put effort into making sure
the walls end up looking nicely painted.
d/ Demonstrate skills and recognize the benefits of working together:
Throughout the project, I had to work with everyone in my class as well as our coordinators. When
choosing our community project, some of my classmates had other projects in mind but ended up
not being selected or working out. During these proposals from my peers, I did my best to be
open-minded and understand their ideas. In the end, we all agreed on painting a public school
which ended up going well. Working as a team to paint during this community service project,
served as an advantage since the school’s walls got covered way faster compared to if it was
done by a smaller group of painters.
e/ Demonstrate commitment to global issues:
Painting the walls of a public school is an act that helps both education and development. Lack
of proper educational environments and education is a problem unfortunately many children in
Africa are facing (many other parts of the world as well). This is due to most public schools not
having enough funding from the government to build proper schools, get textbooks, supplies or
even electricity in some cases. Nonetheless, these public schools are working hard to help the
community by building future leaders and creating opportunities of education for children. Since
usually public schools do not have enough funding, paying painters to paint their walls would take
away money from their expenses that could have been used on the students. This is why by
painting the school’s walls, our class has brought awareness to an issue that affects many
communities around the world.
4 / Conclusion:
In conclusion, I will say this community service project was definitely a first for me. If we were to
redo this project I would suggest that we be more prepared with our painting materials and
mindsets. Due to the fact that we ended up mixing paint with our arms instead of paint sticks and
most of us did not have any background knowledge of how to paint cement walls. Overall, I will
say this project was definitely something that brought more gratitude and hospitality into my heart
as I was able to help improve the educational environment of young children. Furthermore, I was
able to understand on a deeper level the importance of helping out in the community.
Figure 1: Painting the school’s walls Figure 2: Final look of the painted brick wall
Figure 3: Final look of the painted bathroom Figure 4: Closer final look of the painted brick
wall’s exterior wall
Figure 5: Washing the paint rollers