(LO-1, LO-2, LO-3, LO-4, LO-5 )

This was my first charitable group project and I am so glad that it turned out to be so successful for us and others. The aim of our group project was to contribute to our society in some or the other way. Therefore, we as a group, decided to raise funds to purchase reading books and donate in a school for underprivileged children. In order to raise funds, we organized a charitable frisbee tournament in which teams ( max 6 players + 1 sub ) will register and participate. From that event, we as a group made an earning of Rs. 5000 which was used to purchase reading books to donate for underprivileged children.

Throughout the project, as a team member, my strengths were that I was quite good at managing people and hence, during our event I made sure that it was a smooth conduct of our event by always supervising the on-going game as much as possible along with resolving complaints if any. Although the only weakness which I had an which impacted our group was time management. Since couples of times I was not punctual with tasks the furthers steps to be taken as a group were delayed by few days. Therefore, in any upcoming projects (if any) I would like to be punctual with my deadlines and be more vigilant with time management. Since now I am aware of it, I would now like to rectify this mistake and be more responsible about the same in my upcoming projects.

Especially when working in a group, it is very important for us to know and be aware of our strengths and weaknesses and make sure that our strength takes over our weakness, perhaps does not impact the group in a negative manner. If we would know our strengths and weakness, we would know how we can best utilize our strengths to good effect for the benefit of the group, at the same time also learn how to create our weakness into strengths or rectify the same.

One of the most challenging part was how to start about it and how we could make it reach to maximum no.of people as with more people / teams participating will result in more money generated. Therefore, our first step was to decide a timeline of events that will follow one after the other. i.e. deciding the format and schedule of the tournament, no.of teams registration, date and venue selection, etc. Although out of all this, the most difficult thing to do was to decide the format of the tournament which also includes playing rules and team-pools. Since there were close to 14 teams registered, with each team not possessing same quality play, we had to make sure that each pool has same level of competition and challenges perhaps, each team should have an equal chance of qualification for the playoffs. However, we had to tinker our team-pools multiple times to reach to final and fair team-pools for the event. This was a new task for us since it was our first group charitable project.

To overcome this challenge, we man-marked each time with their opponents, based on that teams were divided into three separate pools: Gold, Silver and Bronze. Gold pool comprised of all top quality teams. Similarly silver and bronze pool as well comprised of same level quality teams. Therefore, there were equal opportunities for each team to qualify for the playoffs. Having undertaken this challenge and successfully overcoming it gives us a whole lot of confidence to organize a similar thing in the future as well and as a group we feel quite confident about the same as well. It is quite important and necessary for us to undertake new challenges and explore new areas of ourselves which could turn out to be our strengths. Since being an IBDP student, It is very necessary personally for me to explore myself and the world around myself more because it gives me more and more opportunities to interact with people, get to know them, build connections, be socially active, doing all this helps me build my confidence which ultimately helps me share my ideas and opinions IN front of greater and larger audience at different stages of my life.

Since this was my first huge group project, I had to be very professional in terms of planning and organizing the event. Therefore, since the beginning I had to keep myself pretty organized in terms of what I do first and take one step at a time. i.e. firstly deciding the format of the tournament ( how will it be played ), the process of team registration ( no.of players per team ) and etc. To be more specific, I’d set short term goals to be achieved in a weeks’ time so that the things to come ahead are not delayed further. This was a very handy strategy used in order to keep myself organized.

Although being organized and planned was a quality that I always had since I was a kid, I like to keep things pretty simple and organized, take one step at a time perhaps, don’t be in a rush to complete my work. In my opinion, for most of the part while planning things were pretty simple and as a group and an individual I know what lies ahead of us and what will be the next step. However, initiating was more challenging and difficult as we were not aware about how will people react to it ( how many teams/players will show interest and register themselves for the tournament ). Fortunately more no.of teams had registered and participated in the tournament ( 14 teams ) than we had thought.

Since now I’ve got the exposure of interacting and working together with other people and knowing the fact that with our each step forward, things started to get more clearer for us and it all started to fall in place, I believe planning and initiating such an event in the future will turn out to be much more easier comparatively because know I would be aware of what all things to keep in mind and at the same time need to be careful as well when looking to plan and initiate. i.e. Some of the important things to keep in mind will be money management ( what will I do with the money I get out of this activity ), trying to be cost effective and environmentally sustainable wherever possible.

Talking more about planning and initiating, it is one of those areas that you would want to do well as an entrepreneur because it is what shapes up your idea and helps you reach maximum no.of people. Taking our example, we as a group were on our toes with planning of our event by making the maximum use of social media to initiate and our event to the target audience. As a result, we received a positive response from people.

I wouldn’t say I’m not a team man and I would always prefer working individually no matter, rather I can work with others when I know the quality of work they’ll produce. Based on that the work distributions would happen and that’s how there will be synergy within the group by understanding each others’ strengths and weakness. Although working individually would allow me to work at my own pace think entirely by myself. Hence I would prefer individual work over group work as sometimes it can be even be exhausting.

However, As I said before, I can work with others whom I know them and the quality of work they’ll produce. In this case, I loved working with my other friends as throughout our planning and process of our event, we all group members were always on the same page and covered each other’s strengths and weaknesses by helping each other out. i.e. The one who is good with math looked after the fees registration and all other money related calculations, the one who is good with managing people was doing supervision ( during event ) and attending complaints of players during the event ( if any ) and likewise, the one who were good with arts and designing were given the responsibility of creating the posters for advertising our event. Therefore, this way I found quite easy working with my other friends although this is not something I would always prefer.

We all worked collaboratively as a group because we knew the importance of the same and realized how necessary it was to us. Although the roles were distributed/voluntarily stepped up, each and everyone had the allowance to share his idea/opinion in the group discussion in terms what to do next and how to go about it. i.e. Everyone had the right to share their ideas to how the poster would look like and also for finalizing the format of the game.

Within our group, there was no such concept of a main leader or leadership because every individual was a leader of his own roles to be fulfilled. However, throughout the process there was teamwork within our group. i.e. three of us who lived close to each other, reached venue for ground marking a day before and together helped each other cover the ground and even gather evidences for the same.

Now talking about my final takeaways from this project, As an IBDP student the learner profiles that I developed the most were open minded and communicator. As mentioned before as well, throughout our process and planning I was always open to listen and discuss other’s ideas and opinions about a particular point and likewise my group members ere always open to my ideas and opinions. Moreover at almost each and every stage of our project I was challenged to be a communicator by not only constantly interacting with my group members sharing ideas but also communicating and interacting with other people who also might be strangers to me. i.e. During the event, I had to supervise the on going games and entertain and resolve any complaints if players had.

The reason behind selecting frisbee as our game was simply because there were too many people playing frisbee at any and every stage. Therefore, from top quality teams to very beginners and intermediate teams registered for the event. Hence, for top quality teams this event was just maybe a practice before an UPAI tour ( if any ) and for new teams this event was much more helpful since it provided an exposure to the players to play and interact with such high and top quality teams. Certainly this event benefited not just us as hosts but also the players who participated.

The highlight of this experience for me was at the end of our event everyone congratulated us and gave really positive feedback about how much fun they had in these 2 -3 hours of play. At that moment, we as a group were very happy and we could finally say to ourselves “A job well done!” Hence this project was a success for me and my group! And I’m overjoyed about it and also to be a part of this project.

Throughout the course of this project I learned that in order to work in a team you always have to be punctual with your completion of tasks and need to regularly match deadlines. Otherwise the things to be followed are delayed further and further. In future if I ever did this experience again I would definitely make the process more faster and push myself and others to regularly meet their deadlines. Also I would try to commercialize more by printing match tickets for the audience and also record the entire event just like how international matches are done.

All the lessons learned from this project will be helpful to me when I do a job or even when I own a business because being punctual with completion of tasks is something which is always expected and required out of you. Also being punctual shows that you’re very disciplined and principled in life.

In future, I would hope that I can raise and generate more money by organizing such events and donate or invest where it’s required the most. i.e. Providing funds to a government school running for underprivileged children or contribute to a campaign regarding any social or ethical issue in the society.

Event Pictures:

Ground making evidence