Pattaya Players Halloween Event

Painting kids' faces

What was the activity?

For this activity I had to help out at the annual Pattaya Players Halloween Event. I mainly helped out with the setting up of the area and was in charge of the face painting stall.

What were my aims?

My objectives were to help in making this event as successful as possible, help raise a lot of money for charity, make this event as enjoyable as possible for the participants and develop my face painting skills.

What did I do?

Throughout the evening a lot of people came by dressed up in costumes and everyone actively participated in the events available. Many kids came forward to the face painting table and were extremely happy when they got their faces painted. I can therefore say that I successfully managed to raise a sufficient amount of money for charity and helped in making some kids very happy, thus reaching my objectives.

Were there any problems along the way?

Seeing as I had never face painted before, the biggest difficulty I encountered was to overcome this problem. We had no pictures to work or get ideas from and because we were working at night, the amount of light available to us was far too little. We had to overcome these problems by resorting to two small flashlights and by making up different designs to paint off the top of our heads. At first I was a little nervous as I was scared the children wouldn’t be satisfied with the outcome, however throughout the night my designs were definitely improving and so was the popularity of the face painting stall. There was also an issue with language since a large number of children were Thai and found it difficult to describe to us what the designs they wanted. Luckily I had come across a similar situation before during the Croston House walk (described in paragraph of Croston House Prep and Walk) and thanks to this I was able to overcome the difficulty through the use of hand gestures.

What have I learnt?

I now know that if I ever am unfamiliar with a certain situation I should not panic and do my best to work with the resources which are available to me.