Description of the particular experience and goals:
During my Diwali vacation, my batchmates and I decided to initiate something that would be beneficial for other people. We got this idea since Diwali is a festival of light and love which is exactly what we wanted to spread and hence we organized a fundraising event for an NGO in our city (Unitree). Unitree is a small NGO founded by Vrushi Shah that aims to assist people with down syndrome. They are focused on opening a cafe in the city which will be entirely run by down syndrome people in order to boost their motivation and self-confidence. We decided to provide funds for the same. Football is a sport loved and cherished by many teenage students including us and hence we finalized initiating and planning a Football tournament for fundraising for the NGO: Unitree. Here, we are not only helping the NGO by providing funds for their further progress on the cafe but we are also focused on spreading awareness regarding physical health and encouraging activities that improve it by specifically organizing a sports tournament. To organize this tournament, my batchmates and I conducted a long process which included: brainstorming a realistic idea that could be done as a fundraising event, finding a trustable NGO which would use our money for the good, deciding the target audience, finding an appropriate place to conduct the event, finalizaing on appropriate dates and time keeping the target audience in mind, marketing regarding our event, finding and purchasing the right equipment for the tournament (footballs, medals etc), finding photographers and then finally conducting the event. This was surely a time-consuming and tiring project however I am glad I was a part of it.
Learning Outcome 1: Identifying their own strengths and develop areas for personal growth.
During the process of the project, I was able to identify new strengths I had like creative thinking, marketing, and photography. As mentioned above, there was a lot of brainstorming involved in the process, we had to finalize the right idea to initiate, and we had to decide the appropriate place which was in the center of the city so that it would be convenient for all people to travel to the location and more. All this required intense brainstorming and creative and practical thinking. I was surprised to notice that I came up with a lot of ideas and other people enjoyed my presentation of the ideas. This is a skill that will further help me in many more projects. I also discovered that I am good at marketing, I handled poster creation and distribution which was very successful and reached a lot of people. Since more people knew about the event due to my marketing skills, our event was successful. Along with that, I helped the photographers with a little bit of photography and noticed that I easily got the hang of it. I was able to capture good angles and captured amazing photos even at night. This skill of mine could help me develop a new hobby. However, I also noticed that I was not able to confidently talk to different people when purchasing the equipment or booking the location. This may be because of my shy introverted nature.
Learning Outcome 2: Demonstrate that challenges have been undertaken, developing new skills in the process
Since I noticed that I got shy while talking to unknown people, I decided to do something about it since I realized that later in life I would need to be confident enough to talk to people, be they known or unknown. I pushed myself to take the responsibility of marketing the event. Marketing requires mass communication and I knew I had to develop that skill. I used to tell random people I met on the roads, in shops etc about our event. This helped me to come out of my shell and talk to different people with confidence. By the end of the process, I was able to talk to communicate with confidence to people (known or unknown). I was glad I developed this skill since it is important to learn how to communicate and put forward your ideas and opinions.
Learning Outcome 3: Demonstrate how to initiate and plan a CAS experience
Planning a tournament is not as easy as it seems. My batchmates and I initiated this whole event with the help of no one else. As mentioned above, we conducted a long process to organize the event however we had little time to do so. Since we conducted this event on
Diwali, we had to prepare for the event before it i.e. during our exams. Due to our exams, we wanted to spend less time on planning the event however the process was very long which made it difficult for us to manage our time. Furthermore, we experiences times when there was a clash of ideologies in the group and that made the process more time-consuming and difficult for us. However, I was glad I was a part of the event since it was successful.
Learning Outcome 4: Show commitment to and perseverance in CAS experiences
Commitment and perseverance were something we all had to demonstrate while planning this whole event. We had to constantly communicate the progress and daily updates within the group so that everybody knew what work was done and what was remaining. We had to organize meeting every 2-3 days to maintain the speed of the process. Everyone had to be active which required consistency and commitment toward the planning of the event. Along with that, when we were marketing, we had to daily post about our event on social media and constantly tell new people we meet about our event so that the excitement is built which increases the audience and so that new people are aware of our tournament and they get the will to participate. Since we are in grade 12 and have our separate personal lives, it got difficult to stay very consistent however it was our commitment and dedication towards the tournament that kept us motivated to stay persistent.
Learning Outcome 5: Demonstrate the skills and recognize the benefits of working collaboratively
I organized this fundraising tournament along with three of my other batchmates. I am glad that we worked collaboratively since our work was getting done much faster than it would have if I planned this event alone and we got creative ideas and perspectives from everyone from the group which helped improve and increase the quality of the event we planned. Since we were all busy with our daily lives, we could not afford to take out a huge part of our time and so we decided to divide the work amongst ourselves. This way our work was distributed and there was not a lot of workload on each of us. Our work was also getting done quickly since everyone had to do different tasks. Along with that, we had four creative brains thinking and working on this project hence we had unique fresh ideologies and different perspectives which helped us organize the best event. Even if we had a clash of opinions, we would work a way out and find a solution to incorporate both of the ideas into the event.
Evidence
