Activity 8: Surat Ultimate Open

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The SUO, Surat Ultimate Open, is a Frisbee tournament our school organizes every year. This year it was on the 5th and 6th of December, 2015. The school gave the students the opportunity to lead, collaborate and organize this event on a large scale. Our heads, Khushi and Pranjal, divided us into different departments, according to our strengths. I chose to opt as a volunteer for the Registration department where I was, originally, assigned the duty to make announcements, check all the arrangements, distribute some gifts, collect score cards, and help people in case of any queries regarding the schedule of the event from all over India. There were 4 fields and two people were assigned to photography on each field. One day, prior to the tournament, I felt like I had no work except learn the rules of the game, since my job was to handle all the tasks on the present day. However, I had no clue that how hectic my schedule was going to be on the 5th and 6th of December.

5th December

We, Aashna and I reached the event venue, KG Farm at around 6 in the morning. It was chilly and foggy. We discovered that the tables for registration desk and food were dirty. I was disappointed. However, we knew that we couldn’t keep them dirty because it would only spoil our schools reputation. So, with full spirit, we started cleaning the table. This was something new that I had done. It was a last minute crisis. After clearing everything, we discovered that the prints of schedules weren’t giving to us. The participating teams asked us various questions regarding their match times. We had no answers for those questions. After making multiple calls to Khushi and Pranjal (who were the leaders and participants of the FS SUO Girls team), we answered all the queries. It was challenging, but that is what we learn. I learned that on the present day, I have to stay mentally and physically prepared for such chaos. We gathered all the registration dept. members and delegated work to each one of them, calmly. People were coming and going, inquiring about the matches. The desk was very busy. I made announcements regularly, about the information about the matches and about lunch. I soon realised that everything was a mess because everything was organised and categorized properly. We were given some folders. We decided to divide all the folders into categories such as spirit forms (filled), spirit forms (unfilled), score sheets (filled), score sheets (unfilled) and such like. Allocating it efficiently made our task much easier. This gave me the confidence to tackle all the problems that would come further ahead.

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6th December

The next day was equally busy for me. This was a changing experience as I have never talked to so many people, let alone make announcements on the mic about the upcoming matches. Directing people to the places that they were required to be, sending the score keepers to the match and answering people’s queries were in my job description, and I wanted to give my 100% efforts. I met new people, from different cities, from different countries. One participant was from Texas, and we interacted with her about differences and similarities of her studies and our studies. It was a different experience altogether.

We were a large team. The main ingredients for making an event successful were working like one unit, and helping everyone do their work properly. If the volunteers under us would stop working properly, the event would become more chaotic. Many a times, we had to argue with the volunteers under us so that they could function properly. Shouting and screaming gave me the feeling of working like a head. In the end, I realised that I had to change my behaviour from an arrogant person to confident, optimistic person. Probably, this change in behaviour and attitude towards volunteers will help me immensly, as a leader in the future during organising different types of events.

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Therefore, I was content with my contribution as I was able to successfully work in a large group. I was also able to manage the inflow and outflow of players and the allotment of score-keepers on KG Farm ground.

 

Tree Plantation

I had never indulged in tree plantation activities before. This was the first time I was contributing to the environment, and I must say, it was indeed fun.  It changed my perspective about nature.

I enjoyed visiting serene places and enjoy its pleasant air and nature, however this opportunity of tree plantation made me realize my responsibility as a citizen of the place I live in. This CAS activity gave me the opportunity to give my little contribution in making the world a better, green place, for which I would like to thank Nature Club for taking us to Kendriya Vidyalay School in Piplod on the 4th of July, 2016.

Initially, I wasn’t going to take part in the activity because of my mindset, but the whole experience of planting trees was much more than that.  The thought of taking a step towards making environment an ideal place encoruaged me.

When I was about to reach to the place early morning, it started raining, and my little excitement for the activity was vanishing. I knew I couldn’t let this rain be an excuse of my absence. I thought it was destiny who wanted me to realize the importance of tree planting. The greenery of the place made me realize that the world was becoming a place of concrete buildings instead of lush green trees. I could instantly connect with the changes happen in the society around me, and how it was unethical to make jungles barren for our purposes and seize their beauty.

I could say that even though the rain made it worst for us to plant trees, every bit of hard work was worth it. As soon as I started transplanting the plants into pits and then filling them with mud, I could feel the sense of responsibility of making a very little, but significant change to the society, with respect to an issue of global significance.

Other than being a responsible person, I learned the art of planting and fixing the mud with a shovel and spade.

At the end of the day, I was glad that I was able to contribute to nature’s beauty.

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Profile

Hello, My name is Dhyay Kapadia. I study in Fountainhead school and I am in the second year of IB. I have taken Business management as my HL, English Language as my SL, Psychology as my HL and Hindi B as my HL and Environmental Systems and Societies and Mathematics Studies as my SL. As it is evident from my subject choices, I am more towards humanities and subjects that are more focused towards the society, human mind and human experience. I am not a kind of a guy who keeps talking and likes to shout and debate, rather than talking and debating I like listening. I like to listen and solve problems more than shouting and debating.

In terms of extracurricular activities I enjoy playing sports like Football, Cricket and Kabaddi. I also like to do other things like playing virtual games like FIFA, CS and GTA. Dancing is one of the activities that I would do not matter what the time is, I started dancing when I was 7 years old but never took any professional training. Playing Football and Cooking are the two activities that I am passionate about the most. I have been playing football for years and there hasn’t been any instance where I got bored playing this sport, I have also played many tournaments till now and been selected in the state team twice. The only thing I enjoy after sports is cooking. I have been cooking for a year and I guess I am pretty good at it. However there are some areas in which I would like to improve upon. First would be to improve my physique, I always wanted to be fit but never took the initiative however as I grew I found the importance of having a good strong and healthy body. Second would be to never stop myself from trying new things. I always used to restrain from trying new things but when I tried I got a new experience and learnt new things.

I always wanted to be involved in a world famous restaurant and be the chief chef of that place. I love cooking but never got a chance to work or get the feel of working in that environment, but I have always dreamed of opening up a very unique restaurant that no one has ever seen. I believe that each human was sent to earth for a purpose and I believe that the purpose is to help each other and grow without harming anyone. I also believe that every human has a right to live no matter what their race or gender is till you do not harm anyone. In order accomplish my purpose sometime in my life, I think I need to improve my speaking skills, my commitment and acceptance of people and the society at face value.

I have always been a fan of traveling and to explore the World. I love to travel to different countries and try their foods, I have never been afraid of traveling by myself, and it’s my dream to travel as much as I can till I die. I have always been passionate about cooking and it’s been my dream to be a chef and to open my own restaurant. I want to travel the world,to meet, interact and understand various people around the world and to try different foods and create new dishes and want to help people in need to grow.

 

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Tree Plantation Session at KV Central School

I took a part in a tree plantation session which was organized by a nature club. We had to be at the venue early morning which was quite difficult for me as it becomes very hard for me to wake up early in the morning. However it was a fun activity as we got muddy and dirty in the rain and planting the tree saplings in the hole which were already dug for us, after planting the tree saplings we needed to shovel the mud around the mud which helped the sapling in balancing. While planting the tree sapling I didn’t litter the black plastic which was originally attached to the sapling and threw away all the black plastic in the trash can to not leave the plastic in the mud which could harm the environment. One of the main reason to take part in this plantation session was that the tree sapling were bird friendly trees(ones with flowers and fruits to provide nectar and food to birds), helps in the survival of many bird species and not only this, these plants also help the environment by increasing the oxygen amount, taking in the carbon dioxide and also helps in reducing the amount of global warming. These plants also helps in the survival of many bird species.

As we all had to work as a team I collaborated with my friends in planting the tree samples which helped me in developing my collaborative skills. Planting the samples together was fun. It was a very good experience for me as we all worked towards an issue with global significance, and I personally believe that if we all come together and do something for the environment, we can do great things in protecting the environment. The rain did slowed us down, made the transportation and the plantation very hard, however our hard work and unity helped us to complete the plantation session .It was a new experience for me as it was a first time I did this type of an activity, it also helped me in developing a new skill- Planting a Tree. I think that this activity did make me go out of my comfort zone as I don’t like getting dirty and muddy, but it was a fun activity overall.

 

 

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Global Social Entrepreneurship Summit (Creativity/Activity/Service)

Global Social Entrepreneurship Summit (GSES) was held by American School of Bombay in February 2016. This summit was mainly for students who were interested in gaining knowledge about enterprise and understanding the society. Along with that, it’s amalgamation too; how each one is dependant on the other. I volunteered for this activity because I thought it would be a great learning experience and could also help me for my CV. Mainly, I wanted to explore this area/field and meet new people.

Firstly, talking to new people and collaborating are not my greatest strengths. GSES was majorly a combination of both these weaknesses. I knew I would do alright after a few sessions on the first day, but there was still a hitch. During the whole summit I tried to talk to more people and gain more knowledge about their lifestyle, as there were people from many parts of the world. This way I tried to overcome my fear of opening up to new people.

On the first day itself we were taken to Dharavi for a tuning in session and it was very challenging for us as we had to watch our steps and words. We were taken there to know about the enterprises that happen in that area and how people live there. It was a very unique experience and was challenging in a way that we had to move about in groups and ask questions in the local language. In addition, we had to make sure we asked the right questions as this was a one time trip. We wanted the most appropriate information with the least amount of harm. In the end, after coming back, we realised that the field trip was insightful and resourceful.

The next two days were given to us to work on our personal social enterprise. I grouped with 3 other girls who shared the same concern as me, lack of awareness about Dharavi. We then initiated a plan where we listed down all the problems that Dharavi faces and problems that we think Dharavi faces. With this list we knew our purpose was correct and the issue was finalised. We worked on it for 2 days and on the last day we presented our idea and won the “most promising enterprise” award.

Our social enterprise (The Heart of Dharavi) wasn’t a product or a big service, it was just a well developed Facebook page that worked like  “Humans of New York”. It was unique in a way that we asked people of Dharavi to talk about themselves on the group. Hence, this project could be easily extended even after the summit was over. And we tried to do that by updating the group with a few posts here and there.

Collaboration in this whole experience was a big upside. When we used to not work on our enterprise, we used to discuss about different social enterprises and talk to social entrepreneurs, who have successful TED talks. We went along with our enterprise as an actual business and hence, we looked at everything from finance to customers to marketing. This skill was highly required and we took help from teachers around along with our own knowledge.

This activity was majorly about doing good to the society. We thought it was important for us to make people aware about what actually goes on in the slums. No empathies. This holds huge significance in the lives of people who live their. Our whole idea to banish the perceptions was because we wanted the people who live there, to live in their own peace. We only wanted people to know about the real problems, without any empathies, and work on solving them.

Along with all this, the activity held a lot of ethical considerations. From the beginning to the end. When I first stepped in Dharavi, I told myself to not do anything that would hurt the people living their. It is their place, they live there and have been living there since generations. Our morals say that we should respect everybody and never hurt anybody even unintentionally. This is was all of us had in our mind every time we took a step and opened our mouth to ask a question.

All in all, this summit/activity was a perfect amalgamation of creativity, activity and service. Surprisingly, my efforts to open up to people worked, as I still talk to people I met there. Friends, knowledge, experience, food was enough a reward after we got to know that Heart Of Dharavi was one of the top 4 best enterprises in the Summit.

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Teacher’s Day- Photography (Creativity/Activity)

Teacher’s Day in Fountainhead has always been a big event since many years. Similarly, even this year FH celebrated this occasion very uniquely. Students of grade 10 and 12 prepared a few performances for all the teachers in our school and the rest of grade 11 and 9 students conducted classes for lower grades. In this event, Disha and Khushali (organisers), decided to have a photo booth to capture all the memories for the teachers, and considering my keenness for photography I happily volunteered. Basically, we (Yug and I) set a photo booth with funky props in a designated area, so that all the teachers could come with their squad and get their pictures clicked.

Photography has always been my strength and in this activity I used the best of my interest to help the organisers and the teachers. People say that photography can never be aced in the first try, and practice is necessary. Even though this opportunity wasn’t the most appropriate one to practice the kind of photography I like, I grabbed it anyway as a learning experience. I did identify my strength and learnt a few new things from Yug, my partner in this activity.

This activity/sector was all on Yug and me. We had to be sorted and planned for everything, from setting to props to lighting. Therefore, it was important for us to be committed to the responsibility given to us. I am not a person who can focus on one thing at one time and so it becomes very difficult for me to give my 100% time and energy in the task at hand. But I somehow did manage to give my attention and patience for this particular activity, as my passion was playing a major role.

I had a lot of different ideas for the working of this activity, but because I was working with people, I had to consider their opinions as well. Moreover, there were people above me, so it was important for me to abide by some guidelines and work under a certain decorum. These were my personal ethics playing role, which was a positive as at the end of day all the decisions were made correctly and everybody was happy.

Therefore, working collaboratively and abiding by my ethics, to let people take the upper-hand, helped me enjoy and learn from this CAS experience.

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Math Science Trivia (Creativity/Activity)

Maths Science Trivia is an annual quiz held for senior school (grade 7-10). This quiz has been held for 3 years and this year was the 4th edition. For this year’s trivia, the teachers decided to give the opportunity, to conduct and host, to the students. We were a group of 4-5 people who volunteered to conduct the quiz for Grade 9 and 10.

Basically, my goals for this activity were to enhance my Math and Science skills, and to use my prior understanding to enhance somebody else’s knowledge. The quiz was divided into 2 rounds, where, in the 1st round everybody from both the grades had to participate (mandatorily) for a quick test, and then 2 winners from each grade and house were sent to the 2nd round (final trivia).

In this activity, my biggest strength and weakness, Math and working collaboratively, were put together. I think I did a pretty decent job in showing off my strength, as I made sure I had put in enough efforts from my side while making the test and the final presentation (for the quiz). Moreover, my weakness to handle audience and work with people was looked after once I made myself feel comfortable. Because we had to work on making the quiz and hosting it, hence it became very difficult and crucial for us to have everything sorted.

The activity was planned in such a way that the work is divided into stages and assigned to different people. We made sure that out of the 4 people making the final presentation, each one of us get our area of strength/ interest. We did have problems in getting things done under the time set, but we made sure we didn’t push the deadline too far. Coordination with the teachers was also a task as they had their classes and other work. Initiating this task wasn’t easy but the outcome was satisfying and good.

Moreover, we had to abide by the plan. Personally, I had to be committed to the deadline of adding all Math questions in the sheet that was shared with us. Adding to that, because we were working in bits and not in one go, we had to be persistent with our quality and quantity of work.

The biggest plus of this activity was that teacher volunteers and students, both, had different areas of interest/strength/specialisation which was good in a way that we got insights from different people with different background knowledge. This collaboration helped me in getting  different kinds of views on a problem, also more number of problems (questions).

It was very important for us to be ethical- academic honesty- while making the test and presentation. We used many questions and pictures from the internet and to acknowledge it was very important. We took a very easy step where we kept adding links in the same sheet where we added the questions. Hence, it made our work very easy. It is very important to acknowledge somebody else’s work.

This activity was an interesting one. I got to learn new things, show off my knowledge and overcome my stage fright. This activity also taught me to manage time and collaborate effectively to get the most out of everybody’s potential. Hence, I think the things I accomplished here will help me in other group activities.

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Reflection on ASTH- A Step Towards Humanity

Reflection on CAS project- ASTH

This was one of the most interestingly initiated plans that came up to us! Just before the day of India’s 68 years of Independence, my friend came up with the idea of doing a flash mob for the celebration on such an auspicious day! As the idea seemed interesting to me, I signed up for being in-charge (with my three other friends).

1st flash mob: Independence Day celebration (15th August 2015)

We had a lot of work to be done as it was a spontaneous plan. We decided on our plan by 6:00 pm on 14th and only had about half a day to prepare and then to execute. We had to decide upon the songs to dance on and choreograph them, prepare a drama related to our idea and most of all take permission from the event manager of the mall where we wanted to perform; which was a challenge. This flash mob, our intention was to inform on the subject of- problems faced by people due to religious and caste based discrimination. As we planned on working on social issues we had to be really careful of not to hurt anyone’s emotions and to do something that is morally and ethically wrong. We (Vidushi and I) decided to choreograph the dance, for which we had worked the whole night. The problem here was that we had less time before our grand move and till 8 in the night we didn’t even have the parody of our songs ready, volunteers to participate with us in this and to top it all, most of our friends could not help us by volunteering; and response that we received were “don’t do it”, “You will not be able to succeed”, “your plan is not good enough and won’t work”, etc. Due to all such criticism that we heard from our friends, we (Sakshi, Vidushi, Unnati and I [the organizers]) started to lose our confidence and it was all heartbreaking, but I tried to cheer them all up and tried to be optimistic. At this point in time, I was filled with gratitude of our parents for keeping faith in us and supporting and encouraging us every time even when every other didn’t and when we thought that we would not be able to succeed. So by the end of 14th we did our best and choreographed the dance with a little bit help from YouTube, took ideas from our siblings to help us in composing a drama script, had created a page on social networking site (Facebook) to gather public and to inform them and last but not the least created our logo and finalised on the design.

On 15th I was so excited and tensed that I woke up at 5 in the morning and meet with Vidushi to work on our script. When we all meet at Sakshi’s place, I was so happy to see that few of our parents and relatives decided to volunteer for us, even though how uncomfortable they felt performing in front of such a huge crowd. That was the time when I realized that how grateful we were to have such a family with us. I was really happy to have such a group which knew that we were in a lot of pressure and hence everyone gave their 100% of efforts. Within the next 5 hours, we had to assemble at our destination and we still had a lot to do; we worked on coaching everyone -most of them being non-dancers- to dance on the steps that we choreographed, rehearsed the drama with cousins and compose & practise the song on the same. Later, we were still left to take permission from the event managers of the mall, so I went with Unnati to ask for permission. Now here was another challenge for me, I am not good with putting words forward and I had to convince someone to use their resources in such a short time, but when we meet the event manager, I felt that I was in the seventh heaven because the event manager was someone I got to know recently. This just helped me communicate my thought better because I could see the likeliness of the ball being in our court! I felt happy that I socialised; I talked to her about the things we needed and luckily for us they could provide all of it.

During our show, the good part was that we could gather a whole lot of crowd to audience our performance but, due to this the sound from the speakers that we used was inaudible to the crowd watching us from the top (3rd) floor. This became worse when using the collar mike while acting out the drama. To overcome this challenge all that we could do was use the maximum of our voice level to speak, which resulted in having badly sworn throat for a week. During the dance performance, we also realized that we had lost a few props that we planned on using while dancing. All these things that were happening just made us doubt our efforts, the quality of our work and so the response of the audience.

Even after all the challenges and wrongs that we had faced in the two days, we got a lot of compliments from the audience, the friends that criticized us earlier and of course our supporting and caring family members. This was the time when I felt proud of all the hard work that I and everyone else had put in to make the event such a success. I did not feel bad about all the problems that we had to go through, the criticism that we had to hear and the sleep that I had to compromise upon :P! This was one of the most enriching experiences of my life where I had learned so much. After all, all’s well when it ends well!

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2nd flash mob: Teacher’s Day (5th September, 2015)

The second mob, we thought of doing it on teacher’s day, we thought of taking the issue of illiteracy in our country. For this mob, we were well planned and this time, we had more than 40 volunteers. By just looking at the list of the ones that wanted to join our group, made me feel happy and proud that our first mob did not only completed the purpose of making people aware of their action but the mob also helped us earn volunteers; we did not only found volunteers from our grade but also many other grades (which just showed how amazing our work was to persuade people without our telling them to join).

As we were well planned for the mob and it was no such challenge, this time, we decided to challenge our capabilities by deciding to make our mob effective enough for the people to be persuaded to donate money to an organization that is working for educating underprivileged children on a roadside.

The one thing that has always been a problem for me is the thought that working with people from slum areas is that they are not well cleaned and people from these places are well known for their unhygienic behaviours. This mentality of mine always makes me cringe when a person living in that is near or even around me, making me uncomfortable to work with them, effectively.  So when I was given the task to make them practise for the performance that included them to perform, it was a personal confront for me to overcome this mentality of mine, which was for me as difficult as using the correct English on the first go without any grammatical error. After working with them, I won’t say that I overcame this mentality of mine but I tried to cope with it.

This time, also we had to face certain technical issues while performing like the only a few people could hear the ones performing a skit. Talking about the skit, when the dance performances were over and we started it people started to vanish like an evaporating water. It was really heart breaking for a while, and so to gain audience’s attention back we had performed our dance again. This plan of our worked to gain attention and for the fact we understood that we are not going to perform drama for our next mob, if that’s what makes our audience lose interest.

When the performances were over, Unnati and I went to collect donation from the people shopping around the mall. We went to collect donation from shoppers from the ground floor to the top floor and in the food court as well. When collecting donation, there was this one incident that took places, where when we were asking if the shoppers could don’t even a single rupee the children would benefit, so one of the shoppers actually donated only a coin of 1 rupee, although I felt good The one thing that I felt by the time we were asking for donations in the food court was that people were not donating money for the children but to shoo us away and let them enjoy their time. This made me realize, that we should not have gone to the floor asking a particular groups but just be there and go around announcing so if anyone thought that if our work was good enough they would have donated money without us going around asking for it. (By the way, we collected a good sum of money! And obviously we donated it to the NGO for which we felt grateful!)

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Our third and final Mob: 10th October, 2015 (Garba fest)

Till this time we had learned quite a few lessons, that is to check the speakers before hand in a huge crowd without any one suspecting so that we know that people will be able to listen or not; second, to stop performing informative dramas as people don’t really get awareness through it; and thirdly, never ever, ever go around for asking for donation in a place like malls.

To do things a bit differently from our other mobs, we planned to mob an actual event this time. But because IB is all about ethical considerations we could not do it without the event organisers consent we had to give them a clue as to what our intentions were. So, this became a mob only for the ones enjoying the event.

The theme of this mob was women empowerment, as the event was based on the celebration of the victory of Indian goddess over evil i.e. ‘The Navratri’; also as this was going to be our last mob and all of us organizers of the group were females, we thought that this would be the perfect theme. We planned to do dances related to garba. When practising for this mob we knew that we are going to have enough volunteers for our mob for it to be successful, we wanted the dances to be energetic enough for the audience to want to see our performances again, and the volunteers had to give their 110% of efforts. I was so caught up in making people doing their best that I sometimes got angry on why they are not practising, which was bad on my part.

There was this one girl that did not dance well and made terrible sync mistakes, so to avoid a bad performance, we had decided to tell her that she won’t be able to be a part of this, as she is not able to do well. But just a day before when we were going to break this news to her, in the night, the girl’s parents had called me telling that she is a girl suffering from asthma and that we ask her to not put so many efforts as she is not listening to what her parents are telling her and as she is facing breathing problems when she reached home. This call of about 5 minutes, made me think of how judgemental we were, especially I, and this made me think about myself for more than 5-6 hours, this call just made me change my paradigm about that girl. So, the next day I talked to my group and told them about the phone call, and I got the same reaction from them, shocked and guilty. This phone call did not just made me think of my actions but also made me check myself! What my thoughts have become? This call acted like a self check-point for my life and helped me improve and refresh my thoughts.

This mob was one of the best mobs of all the three that we did; there were minimum management problems we faced and people enjoyed this mob the most.

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I loved this three months journey of mine, which taught me so much and gave me so many life lessons. This was the most amazing activity of all that I did throughout the year.

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“Dance to express, not to impress”

ASTH (A step towards Humanity) is an organization that was started by some of my companions, havin12106937_865988956854842_6637523729630105771_ng the aim to create awareness about current problems of the society/world in a creative manner.

I have always participated in activities that have dance in it, though for the first time I danced for a cause. I relished the times that we spend for practicing and performing.

5th September 2015– Our first flash mob was on teacher’s day and its theme was ‘Education for all’. We had to dance with the under-privileged children from DISHA NGO (which is the major cause of this event). I was dedicated to the practices that we had. However, the timings were hectic and I learned how to manage while completing all my academics work as well as stay committed in all the practices.img_1534

Before the last week of our performance, we had regular practice after school which was demanding and laborious, yet I attained each one of them. Simultaneously, with practicing we made many posters so the intensity of the impact on the people increases when words are added.

After this performance, we asked people in the mall if they could give money to a charity to educate the children of DISHA NGO. I was surprised by the responses that people gave; they were ready to give as much as they could.

The idea of this theme was strong and was of global significance.

As we asked the children to dance with us, therefore we had to make sure that we do not make them feel out of the place in front of the audience.

One of the problems that we faced was that the sound system of the mall was not good enough to grab everyone’s attention which decreased the intensity of the impact that could have been created. Although we tried our best to pass on the message to as many people as we could.

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At the start my plan was to take part only in one flash mob, however, as the first flash mob was amazing,  I participated in the second flash mob whose theme had a soft corner in my heart and I felt strongly about it.


 

10th October 2015- In an event called Garba Fest and our theme was ‘Women Empowerment’. 12122842_865971273523277_6182398611891158077_nThe best part about this event was the suddenness in which our performance started. We chose the songs based on the theme of the event, which was India’s folk dance Garba. One funny thing was that people started dancing with us normally. From our previous experience with the speakers and music, we improved the speaker quality to get louder which certainly caught more attention and created a stronger impact.

At the end of the performance, we gave a small speech about empowering women of India as a small change will lead to a big one. One thing that we knew from the audience’s lively response, was that somewhere they understood our message fulfilling our purpose.

 

 

Activity 11: AS Visual Arts | Creativity

Visual Arts used to be something I loved to do as a kid. However, for a long time, I had become disconnected from the field as I was caught up in a never ending stream of assignments and examinations.

CAS in Grade 11 and 12 gave me the opportunity to formally take up VA – something that had been restricted for too long to the end pages of my notebooks. This formal training enabled me to greatly develop my fine motor skills, as I dabbled in various art forms – ranging from wood-cut printing to fashion design. Before these two years of VA classes, I always thought of myself as someone who had a lot of ideas about art, but lacked the skills to make them a reality. Through systematic exploration of various art techniques – such as using photo-ink colours, polishing and carving wood, and painting on thin muslin cloth, I was able to use my skills to express these ideas.

Another learning that VA has given me is that of perseverance and patience. Because I was committed to making each of my art pieces the best versions of themselves, I was forced to go against my impatient, ineffectual attitude towards work to attain the desired perfection. Moreover, the weekly VA classes that I religiously attended for two years provided me with a much-needed breather from the humdrum of everyday life: in the VA room, sitting quietly and painting away tiny pastel flowers, the problems of the mundane don’t seem to matter all that much.

That is not to say that art completely disconnected me from the real world and its problems. As someone who cares deeply about humanitarian causes, I tried to incorporate messages about the world into my art. For instance, after the Paris attacks in Nov 2015, I made a woodcut print depicting the Eiffel Tower caught in Van Gogh-esque swirls to pay homage to the victims and their families. Speaking of great artists, I was also forced to consider the ethical implications and the thin line between ‘being influenced’ and ‘copying’ as I explored artwork by artists ranging from Dali to Mondrian. More locally, I had to be careful that I wasn’t subconsciously but unethically borrowing ideas from my exceptionally talented peers 😛

In all, I think this was a really positive experience for me in terms of development of new skills, commitment and perseverance and ethical implications.

CAS VA

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