Category: Vidushi Manish Gupta

All bucked with deadlines and back-to-back submissions, CAS was like a stressbuster for me. The three components of CAS-creativity, activity and service have helped me move out of my comfort zone and try new things everyday.

There are two activities that come to my mind when I recall my journey of CAS. Both the activities have given me different experiences. The first activity is my group project ASTH. ASTH (A Step Towards Humanity) was the first event that was initiated by me. From the planning stage to the execution stage each and everything was done by me and my friends. Even the choreography for all the dances was done by us. We weren’t dependent on anyone for the resources or for the venues where we had to perform. Everything was handled by us and we were solely responsible for our actions and decisions. This made the task a lot more challenging for us. This activity has helped me discover my strengths and hidden talents. Through this activity I have overcome a lot of my fears and have seen myself developing new skills.

 

A day spend with orphan kids is another activity that comes to my mind when I think about CAS and the reason behind this is this day made me realizes what true happiness is , what inner satisfaction is and how we should be content with all that we have. When I spent time with those children and saw their faces light up with smiles , it made me  realize what it is to be someone else’s sunshine.

Initially when CAS was introduced to me it felt like an additional burden with all the studies. However, when I started taking up leadership roles with each activity CAS seemed to be more and more interesting. Apart from being a risk taker, balanced and caring the major skill that I have developed through CAS is time management skills.

 

Overall CAS has been an amazing experience for me and I would love to carry out more such activities if time permits.

Like every year even this year teacher’s day celebration was organised by our grade. Because this is our last year in school we wanted to celebrate this day in a way that was unforgettable. To make this day a memorable one for all our teachers we did a few things that we thought would make this day special for them. Firstly, we made a video that was a complilation of all the times we’d spend together followed by a dance performace. My friend (Unnati) and I were given the responsibility of choreographing the dance. The whole idea behind the dance performance was to express our feelings and love for our teachers.

We had planned for a drama cum dance where we had one of our friends become the HOS. We had to organise a lot of meetings to choreograph the dance. During those meetings is when I identified my strength of choreographing a dance. Apart from identifying my strengths I got to learn a lot more things which helped me enrich my knowledge about this particular activity.

What came up as challenge for me during the preparation of this event was to manage my studies simultaneously with the workload of this event. Studying for the exams and at the same time being fair towards my other responsibilities was being really difficult for me. Due to the tight schedule and limited time at first I thought I wouldn’t be able to do justice to both the responsibilities, however towards the end I did smart work and  was able to manage my time effectively.

For an event to be successful working together as a team is extremely important. Unnati and i did the same. In fact, all the members in our grade worked collaboratively to make this event a huge success. Coordinating with all the classmates during the preparation and execution stage of this event is where my team spirit as an individual and my inputs to the event comes into picture.

Overall, this was one of the activities that I’ll always remember because I had real fun with my classmates and teachers and especially because I have a lot of good memories of this day.

 

 

I volunteered for Hindi Assembly which was organised by 2 of my classmates, and was held in our school. I was assigned a task to conduct an activity called: 7 min ka Jalwa. In this activity grade 11 and 12 were given 10 dares, which they had to complete in 7 minutes. The dare’s were different for both the grades. It was a challenge for me to conduct the activity as I have stage fear and I face a lot of trouble when it comes to facing the audience. However my determination to make this event a success helped me overcome my fears and conduct the activity successfully and with confidence.

I was committed toward my work as I had to decide the criteria based on which the participant will be judged with my partner, and we had to meet several times to discuss and plan during the initial stages. I cooperated and coordinated well with my partner and other volunteers during the planning and executing of the activity, by making sure that all the resources needed for the activity were in place. In addition, I helped other volunteers who were facing problems while coming up with an activity which was entertaining and possible to do. In my activity among those 10 dares a few dares demanded the participants to mimic our teachers. During this we had to make sure that the participant knows the limits and that they do not hurt the feelings of any teacher, which would have been unethical.

I personally enjoyed conducting the activity and the audience liked it as well. I feel that it was a challenge for me but I learned how to engage the audience and make sure that they were not bored, and also to be confident I am looking forward to initiating an assembly like this again if time permits.

                              

My friend and I volunteered for an eye checkup of under privileged children. This camp was conducted by Rotary Club of Udhana in Navnirman school where there were hundreds of unprivileged students. Out of these children a lot of them had vision problems, but couldn’t do anything because of financial problems, lack of resources and lack of education. To help them with their vision Rotary Club had set up this camp where children who had vision problems were provided with spectacles.

What came up as a challenge for me during this activity was speaking in Gujarati and conversing in sign language. Gujarati was the only language that the children understood and because I do not know how to speak in Gujarati conversing with the children became really difficult. Few of the students could not even understand Gujarati, in that case we had to use sign language in order to converse with them which again was a challenge for me. Understanding each other was a problem initially, however after sometime both of us (the children and I) were quite comfortable with each other and the conversations were going smooth.

When I volunteered for this activity I was not at all excited because there wasn’t much that I could have done other than helping. The reason I had volunteered for this activity was because I had done only a few activities that could have been categorised under the service component. Initially, I wasn’t talking a lot to those kids all the instructions were given by my friend because I wasn’t feeling comfortable around them. But when we started helping the club members in checkup I found myself actually enjoying the company of those kids. After the checkup was over my friend and I had a lot of fun. We played a lot of games. On our way back to home while reflecting upon our experience with those kids I realised that after getting out my comfort zone I had real fun. It felt really good. I am glad that I was part of this activity

Hi. My name is Vidushi Gupta and I study in 12th standard. I am a very reserved kind of a person, who hates to be lied. This is the reason I like talking to selective people.

I have always been appreciated for my dance especially bharatnatyam. This is one of my talents apart from organisation and management skills. I started dancing when I was 6 years old. Since then dance has been a very crucial part of my life. Dancing gives me immense pleasure. Besides dancing there are a lot more things I enjoy doing and which gives me equal happiness, such as, travelling and exploring new places, spending quality time with my family and friends, listening to music and reading and learning about various disorders.

As always being quoted by my close ones to be generous and caring. I wholeheartedly devote myself into social service for underprivileged children. In my believe every individual has an equal right to live. Therefore, with the idea of spreading awareness about various issues in the society and problems faced by underprivileged, my friends and I started with an activist group called ASTH (A Step Towards Humanity). It functions for the benefit of underprivileged children.

Apart from actively participating in the above initiative, according to me life is a lot more. It’s about how well an individual manages leisure with responsibilities. It is about grabbing every opportunity that comes your way and being satisfied with all that you have. Most importantly life’s about smiling in every phase that one faces. Rightly said by Kathleen Edgar “Smile awhile and while you smile – another smiles, And soon there are Miles and miles of smiles and Life’s worthwhile Because you Smile”. And now this is my life’s motto.

I believe that one should broaden their horizon to acquire knowledge about surroundings and step out of their comfort zones to deal with the reality of life. Applying this, I would like to learn more about human behavior-as to why do humans behave the way they do. As learning is a never ending process I would really like to attempt adventurous activities like skydiving and scuba diving.  

 

This was the most interesting activity out of all that I had done so far. It demanded a lot of efforts and time.For the first time,I did not feel stressed when it came to working hard for an event.

We were a group of four girls. One of them came up with this idea of performing flash mobs to create awareness in the society regarding issues that are commonly ignored people,while we were planning for our project work. Basically flash mob is a large public gathering where groups perform an unusual act and then disperse.13th August was the day when we discussed the brief plan and came to a consensus of taking it up as our project. It was a completely different concept for the four of us. We decided to execute the plan as soon as possible.

Nothing could be better than having our first performance on 15th August-Independence day, is what we thought. Keeping the occasion in mind we decided to take up caste and religion as our issue. Everything was planned. However, when it came to executing the plan everything seemed to be impossible because there was a lot of work to do and we had very less time. Without wasting our time we approached our mentor and discussed what we had planned for. The minute she approved we started hunting for a place to perform. What came as a challenge for us was deciding venue. We had planned to perform in a mall because that is one place where we find people from all religions. However, only deciding wouldn’t have helped. We knew it was difficult to convince the head of event management department on such short notice. Surprisingly, when we had a talk with the head they granted us the permission to perform in their mall. Now we had only one day to gather volunteers,choreograph dance and teach the them. Without wasting any of our time anymore we started looking for volunteers. Nobody agreed to join us and because it was a spontaneous plan many of them though we wouldn’t succeed. At the beginning we were only 6 people and we needed 9 more volunteers. Because nobody was willing to participate, our family members, neighbors and friends from outside the school helped us and together we made a group of 15 members. It felt really nice knowing that there were people who trusted us and believed in our ideas. After a lot of practice and fun rehearsals it was the day. After seeing the crowd applauding we realized we did it. We turned a spontaneous plan into a successful event, one which will always remain with us.

That one performance had taught me a lot. It taught me that no matter how difficult things appear to us if we believe in ourselves and have the courage to stand up, we can get through every problem with a smile. What made the four of us through with this problem was the synergy and understanding that we had between us. The benefits of working collaboratively were clearly reflected. On a personal level I did face a lot of challenges and tried overcoming them as well. One of which was speaking in front of an audience. I have a fear of public speaking which through this act reduced to a certain level. Organizing and managing the event, handling the team members and motivating them at every stage was also something that came up as a challenge to me. By taking up the responsibility of a leader I managed to overcome this challenge as well.

Through our performance on Independence day we tried to showcase that there is no such thing as caste and religion. Instead of grouping ourselves into categories we should stay with peace and have unity among ourselves, because with unity we can win any battle. There were a few ethical considerations that had to be taken care of. One of which was to make sure that even indirectly nobody’s sentiments were hurt. Post the event we got a lot of appreciation from our parents, peers and teachers and therefore, we decided to make this idea official and name our group. After a lot of suggestions we decided to the name the group as ASTH. Every letter of this word had was special. ASTH signified “A Step Towards Humanity”.

Having done all of this. We decided that every flash mob that we will perform will be held on an occasion. Therefore, grabbing the opportunity of performing on 5th September, on the occasion of Janmashtmi we started with our planning before hand this time. Because we had ample of time, this time we decided to circulate a form in our school to gather participants who actually wanted to bring a change in the society. For our second flash mob we collaborated with DISHA-an NGO. This NGO works for the cause of educating underprivileged children, and knowing this we decided to take up encourage education for all as our issue for performance on the occasion of Janmashtmi. This time we had round about 40-45 members including the children from NGO. Seeing these many people join us to bring a change, made us happy. With the happiness came along a lot of pressure of work. Teaching so many people at the same time and calling them for rehearsals early morning in the school and on weekends was not an easy task. However, we managed to do all of this as a team while supporting each other no matter how difficult sometimes the situation was. For our second performance we had prepared two dances and a drama. Out of the two dances one was performed by these kids. This was again a successful event especially because we were able to collect funds for the underprivileged children. The reason we collaborated with the NGO was because we wanted to do something for the education of these kids and by keeping a donation box wherein every member standing in the crowd could donate money for the kids, we were able to collect a huge sum. The total amount that we gathered was around Rs. 67000. Having taken the leadership of the group I was committed to my work in way that I made sure I attended all the practices on time whether it was early morning in the school or on weekends. Apart from the fact that we had a lot of time to prepare and make sure not to repeat the same mistakes, this event was successful because people who had taken part were putting in a lot of efforts and were devoting as much time. They really wanted to bring a change. While reflecting on our second performance we realized that there was a lot of improvement and that there was still scope for more. We listed down a few problems that we faced during the event was in place so that we take care of them for the next time. While the drama was going on we faced a lot of problems with the sound system. The mikes stopped working and all of us started panicking a little. We were all confused as to what should we do on the spot, because if the mikes wouldn’t work the people wouldn’t be able to hear our voices and our performance would eventually be hampered. We started losing hope, but we did not give up. We started shouting on the top of our voices to the convey the message we wanted to and fulfill the purpose of coming and performing for the kids. As a team we did an excellent job.Everybody was really proud of us and so were we.

  

Learning from our mistakes we organised the very last flash mob of ASTH. This time instead of performing in a mall we decided to perform in our school on the day Garba fest. One of our friends organised this event in school on the 10th of October and they allowed us to crash their event and perform a flash mob. Volunteers were gathered the same way as before by circulating forms. This time we were a group of only 20 members. And because we were less in numbers compared to the previous time we had to give our 100% to grab the audience’s attention. The challenges that I faced during the last flash mob were not because of the practice sessions or the time management but because of my academics. Managing the event and preparing for exams simultaneously was a difficult job. Nevertheless, like before as a team we gave in our 100% and cooperated with each other to make this last flash mob a perfect one. Women empowerment was our issue for this flash mob. In order to begin from home we took this up as our issue for performance in school because this is that one place where we study about women being discriminated and treated badly all over the world.

Facing ups and downs, overcoming all the challenges that came in our way as a team we created ASTH. All of us had different strengths and weaknesses. Combining all the strengths and eliminating all the weakness we made these series of events successful. Everything that we did was as a team. After our last flash mob we decided to make a Facebook page where we could be in touch with the public who supported us and helped us take a step towards humanity and create an awareness in the society. What if we couldn’t continue with our performances, what makes me happy is the number of followers that our page has gained within a short period of time. The number of supporters itself is enough to show that humanity within people still exists. This activity has given me a lot to remember. During the entire journey of performing flash mobs for social cause, apart from learning I have made some beautiful memories. By taking the responsibility of managing this event I seem to have gained confidence in public speaking and improve a little on my persuasive skills.

 

Bal mela is an activity organised by my school (Fountainhead school) every year. The main aim behind organizing such an event is to give opportunity to underprivileged to relive their childhood and to spread smiles. All the activities that we had planned for were planned in a way that children would enjoy to their fullest.. This event was a huge success because of a lot of reasons, one of which was the synergy that we had among ourselves. From planning to executing the whole event every decision that was made involved opinions of everybody from the organizing committee. A lot of students including me were a part of this organizing committee. In order to make this day a memorable one for the children, we had planned for activities such as face painting, dancing, tattoo making etc.

After putting in so much efforts, 13th Feb 2016, was the day for the event. Personally I wasn’t feeling good about the event because I was very nervous as to how will I manage to handle 40-50 kids at a time. Also what made me nervous was, will I be able to take them back into the times of their childhood. Because what I thought earlier about underprivileged kids were that they might not be very enthusiastic when it comes to mingling with new people and that they might have low self esteem. However, I was wrong.

I was into the department of my interest;’running stage’. We had to make the children do freestyle dance. I was really excited for this. However, what came up as challenge for me was to perform in front of 40-50 people without preparing, so that the children could see us and do the same. Initially I wasn’t very comfortable dancing in front of so many people, however as time passed I could make up to the challenge and was able to overcome it. During this process I was able to identify one of my strengths I never thought about and that was to be able to dance on the spot without having rehearsed.

Something that all of us had to keep in mind was the ethics of our choices and actions. We had to make sure that we treat every child equally so that none of them’s feelings get hurt. In a nutshell, this was an amazing experience and it gave me a lot to remember. What gave me true happiness was seeing the children with smiling faces throughout the event. This was a relief for me as my only purpose was to make them happy and give them a chance to enjoy all the stuff that we do. And something that I took as a lesson from this experience was that one can make through anything if he/she has the dedication and desire to do it. Nothing could give me immense pleasure than knowing that we as a team made it happen,and fulfilled our aim.

What else can be more special than spending sometime with orphan kids from Charlie Help age. We did some activities with them like ice breaking session, card making, zumba, painting and we showed them a movie as well.

I personally had an amazing and really helpful experience. Spending time with those kids made me realize  that I am blessed to have such a life with great opportunities coming my way and I should appreciate everything that I have today instead of looking for more. Those kids were so lively that seeing them I couldn’t feel as if they lived in an orphanage and had something’s missing in their lives.

Initially I wasn’t comfortable with those kids as this was my first experience with orphan kids and it took me sometime to get involved with them. However, when we started dancing and when we started with the activities I was able to come out of my comfort zone and interact with those kids. This made it easier for both, the children and me to enjoy the rest of the time with each other and know each other better.

This activity involved a lot of teamwork as we had to make the kids feel comfortable because this was their first time of going into a school, meeting new people and spending a whole day with them. Our synergy brought them closer to us and working together as a team made it easier for us to entertain them and not make them feel as they have something less than us.

Throughout the activity everything went very smooth, we were able to mingle with the kids and so were they and all of us were comfortable with each other except one child. The entire day that child did not utter a word neither did he participate in any of the activities. This led us to ponder about what was it that was disturbing him. Till the end of the day we were able to cheer him up irrespective of the fact that we did not come to know exactly what he was thinking about.

There was one thing that we had to be very particular about. That was considering the ethics of our choices and our actions. Ethics played a major role in the way we treated the children. We had to be very conscious in the way, that we treat all the children equally so that we don’t hurt the feelings of anyone of them.

I learned a lot of things from this activity:interacting with strangers and make them feel comfortable around me, working together as a team, and most importantly being satisfied and happy with what I have. Above all this, what gave me true happiness was seeing the children enjoying themselves to their fullest and forgetting about everything else.

              

 

Planning for the activities to be conducted

Dancing is one of my hobbies and I have always been passionate about this activity as it is a stress buster for me. I have always wanted to join dance classes and learn new dance forms except contemporary. Attending dance classes have always made me fresh and has given me immense pleasure. It is the only thing I want to do when I return from school extremely tired and I love doing it. I managed attending dance classes 5 days a week from 6:00 pm to 7:00 pm with my regular school for about 3 months.These classes have helped me develop new skills, identify my own strengths and improve my previous dancing skills.

Learning new and different dance forms like rock and roll, hip-hop, bachata etc have improved my body posture in dancing and also have helped me get control over my body. I have mainly improvised on getting to know the song better so that I don’t miss any beat while dancing. By joining the classes I have started enjoying dance more than ever and now I can feel the intensity of a particular dance form. I have also improved my stamina in learning all these dance forms as dancing continuously requires a lot of stamina especially dances like hip-hop and rock and roll. I had also performed a carnival which requires true commitment and dedication and it was a stage performance of what I had learnt during those 3 months. Sometimes during the practice we were supposed to stay there for more than an hour and we did that. This is where I was committed towards the activity that I was performing. We were a group of 20 students where we had to collaborate with each other to have a synchronized dance performance. And this helped in interacting with new people in a new environment without having issues with adjustment.

Dancing has helped me in a lot of ways like it is one of the mediums through which I can express myself when words aren’t sufficient, it has brought grace in my moves and clarity in my steps. I have become more expressive due to dancing. Dancing gives me extreme happiness and every time I dance I get to know a new side of me and this is what makes me keep going.

 

 

 

This was our first trip of the year. Moreover, this was the first time that I would have been doing plantation. I was really excited about it. The place where we went was Janki Van which is a new botanical garden in Vasada. The motto behind this activity was to plant more trees and save the environment. I felt really obliged to get the opportunity to help the workers out there who plant a number trees every day to make sure that in future people have a place for leisure and face no problems. We were given different tasks which we had to complete in a team. These tasks involved planting, digging the ground and moving plants from the truck to the ground. I was very skeptical about doing these tasks as I had never done them before. These activities seemed to be boring at first however when we actually started doing it, it was fun irrespective of that it was extremely tiring under the hot sun. We had 15 members in each group. To complete our work faster than the other groups we mutually decided and divided the tasks which made our work easier. All of these activities involved synergy. Working collaboratively helped us complete our tasks faster after which instead of sitting ideally and passing our time chit chatting we did extra work, which helped the workers and this involvement by us made them happy as they could see our dedication. By interacting with workers, we got to know a lot about plants. It was a lot of fun in helping them and gaining knowledge at the same time. They also shared their experiences of working under the sun every day and how planting gave them happiness. They were really happy seeing us over there helping them and so were we. Workers over there were really friendly, they taught us everything very patiently from techniques of planting to how to plant actually. They did not lose their temper at any point even when we were unable to do it or we made mistakes while doing it. I felt good to have grabbed this opportunity because this was the first social service I did with all my willingness and putting in all my efforts. The practical experience taught me of working in a team enthusiastically and how our little efforts can have a huge impact on the environment and eventually result in a good cause. The ethical implications that were related to this activity involved working properly in the correct manner and respecting the workers as well as their work. I felt a sense of pleasure after we completed this activity as all of us were successful in planting a lot of trees collectively for the betterment of the society.