Timeline: September 16, 2021 – June 17, 2022

Sustainable Development Goal: Life on Land

The Animal Welfare Group works to help raise funds, raise awareness, help find homes for abandoned/rescued animals, work for the animals, and try to prevent any injustice done to them. Throughout the year, we worked on various big projects such as bake sales, helping the school dog, feeding station tasks, and any street animals vaccinations. In addition to all these tasks, I was the Head Digital Designer of the Animal Welfare Group, catering to the creative aspect of this experience. During this CAS experience, I demonstrated the following Learning Outcomes:

Learning Outcome 3: Demonstrate how to initiate and plan a CAS experience

In the Animal Welfare Group, a lot of small activities used to happen, such as sales, candygrams, and vaccinations of animals. For organizing all of these activities, I assigned different tasks to various people. To organize all of this information, I made a document with each task, and the people working on it. I am usually a very organized person, so planning the entire activity was not a difficult task. But, I think the initiation was more difficult because some people didn’t do their work and some people were absent on the day of any activities, which used to make it difficult to manage. Due to this, I definitely feel like planning and initiating would be easier in the future now, because I could now analyze all the things that could go wrong during the activities and could try to resolve them beforehand.

Learning Outcome 5: Demonstrate the skills and recognize the benefits of working collaboratively

Working with others is generally easy for me since I am very friendly and love working with others if given a chance. In the Animal Welfare Group, as well, it was quite easy for me to collaborate with the other leaders in the group. Luckily, there was no one difficult to work with in this Group. I feel like it is important to be able to work collaboratively because in life it isn’t always possible to do everything alone and we would require someone’s help. So, it is definitely beneficial to learn collaboration skills right now. Teamwork was really important in this experience because the coordination of all of the sales and events required collaboration by each and every member of the group.

Learning Outcome 6: Demonstrate engagement with issues of global significance

Talking about the sustainable development goal, being in this group allowed me to understand the torture that is done to the “life on land”: the animals. We had once seen street dogs that were poisoned and killed, and their puppies crying and running around without their parents. Since our school was on the outskirts of Istanbul, there were a lot of farms around and the farmers would complain that the street dogs destroy their crops. We, then, actually decided to raise this issue in the school and take action on it ourselves. Knowing about this issue has made me feel more compassionate toward animals. Therefore, whenever I had to work on any task in this group, I would do it very positively, because I knew that all of what I was doing would help the unvoiced.

Learning Outcome 7: Recognize and consider the ethics of choices and actions

The ethical issue that was involved in this experience was discrimination toward animals. It was a rising issue in the suburbs of Istanbul. Therefore, we felt like we had to act on this issue. This ethical issue affected me directly since I developed a new feeling of sympathy for animals after looking at the atrocities that were done to them. It made me feel melancholic. Before, I actually used to think that no one would harm street animals and would respect them because we are the ones who invaded their land. But, as it turns out to be, not everyone thinks alike. Therefore, I understood that this is a rising issue and have become more proactive about it.

Firstly, in this experience, I tried to develop as a communicator. During this experience, I was able to express myself confidently and creatively. I worked well with others and listened carefully to their points of view throughout the experience. Secondly, I strived to be caring. Throughout this experience, I attempted to demonstrate empathy, compassion, and respect. I was dedicated to serving others and trying to make a positive difference in the lives of others and the world around us. This activity benefitted the street animals and helped their adoption and vaccination. The highlight of this experience for me was the vaccination drive. All in all, I feel like this experience made me more empathetic toward animals.