My friend and I created a community for people dealing with mental illness. We did some research and found that playing with the cows is very therapeutic as it helps release oxytocin and relieves stress. This concept was first introduced in the US.

We thought we could have a 2-3 day event where people could come and play with them. So until now, we conducted one event wherein we invited small children who actually enjoyed a lot playing with them, and then we also had fun games with them now that seeing there is scope for this we tied up with a physiologist who will bring their clients to us who also take a part in this and then a yoga session will be followed up later. For now, our main goal is to spread awareness about mental illness or loneliness so we are also putting information about depression, anxiety, and what causes it.

LO 1-Identify own strengths and develop areas for growth

I am already aware that I don’t master the area of writing and my partner was rather a tech-savvy person she respected me and visa versa. We assigned roles accordingly and it helped us so much that we did what we mastered in and our final result was up to the mark. This proves the point of knowing your strengths and weaknesses is so important. Writing is very essential and is used and required in every area of life which is why to improve my writing skills I have started to read books that improve my vocab and way of writing.

LO 2-Demonstrate that challenges have been undertaken, developing new skills in the process

The most challenging part was to understand the concept ourselves because it was only launched in the US and the Indian population was not aware of it secondary managing all the kids and making sure no chaos was created was also tedious but increased my management skills.

We created an Instagram page to spread awareness about this so I learned how to professionally create posts with the help of editing apps like canvas and many more now that everything is moving to online platforms it is really important to learn for overcoming this challenge I saw youtube videos and with my partner, we both taught each other different things.

LO 3 -Demonstrate how to initiate and plan a CAS experience

We organized the whole project and started from scratch, I actually really like planning stuff so this was the interesting part for me. It is really essential to learn how to initiate and plan as it helps with your day-to-day activities too. Before the first event, we were very skeptical that will it work because even we were really new to this but after the first event, we were so happy that the kids enjoyed and they even demanded one more event. Now we are planning one more day of it with adults and people who suffer from anxiety or depression with a specialist.

LO 5- Demonstrate the skills and recognize the benefits of working collaboratively

I personally don’t have a problem with working with other people but I want my opinion to be valued and it should be showcased at the event. It was not tricky collaborating but not to smooth too, both of us had differences in opinion in the smallest of decisions which lead to a lot of consumption of time also our schedules didn’t align perfectly with each other which again was a problem. But we did not take it negatively, instead tried our level best to cooperate and include both opinions in our work. At the end of the day, this skill is a must and everyone should learn and use it in the future.

A short clip of the first-day event: