Arts
Ripple: There’s fun, safety and community spirit
From watching Jaws while on floaties in a swimming pool to playing glow in the dark basketball. ‘Ripple’ is changing what teenagers do for fun. On a mission to connect all teenagers around Colombo, ‘Ripple’ was launched in June this year by students Shenaya Fernando, Zainab Akbarally, Akheel Esufally and Jacopo Zullo.
Akheel Esufally, Zainab Akbarally and Shenaya Fernando. Pic by Priyanka Samaraweera
The Ripple management team now consists of Shenaya, Zainab and Akheel, down to three with Jacopo going overseas, as well as two new members: Janith Weerasinghe and Viveka Sivakaran. Both Shenaya, 17, and Akheel, 16, are at the British School and are president and vice president of their school’s Interact Club. Zainab, 17, is at Elizabeth Moir School.
“The concept behind the name Ripple is that through a series of curated events we can, over time foster a sense of community,” Shenaya says.
The founders saw firsthand that there was lack of entertainment for teenagers -partly because there are few places in Colombo that teenagers could go to have fun. Parents understandably were hesitant to send their children out, thus creating a circular effect.
“We wanted to create a safe environment that parents would let their kids go to,” says Akheel. All the events they organise are in safe places and are supervised by parents.
“We want to do a foam party, and one of our other ideas is a giant ‘escape the room’,” says Zainab discussing their future events. Ripple focuses on events that aren’t usually done in Sri Lanka and uses the proceeds to help disadvantaged young people. All proceeds from their first event in August went to the charity ‘Appe Lanka’, which provides clean water to schools in Northern Sri Lanka.
“One of the other things we wanted to create with ‘Ripple’ was that sense of community amongst teenagers,” says Shenaya. In their basketball game for example the teams were not specific to schools, thus encouraging inter-school friendships.
Visit their Instagram page to learn about their upcoming events: https://instagram.com/ripple.sl?igshid=1xyk76yemb264.