Grade 12 Sangfroid – Page 13

Munning has always been an engaging task for me , but for the past two times what has been more interesting for me is organizing them . Organizing Fsmun is an event that is very dear to me as it was the first time that I won the best oc member award, so when this time the venture forms were out I filled them as soon as possible, not only me but the organizers of FSMUN also wanted me to be a part of the organizing committee. However, due to this the organizers did not conduct any interviews for me but held them for others. I later realized that this was somehow unethical, but the duties were already assigned and I could not do anything about it. Unlike last year I was made the head of the food department which made me more zestful about the mun because in the past MUN I was just another volunteer. However this year I had to collaborate and cooperate with a lot of people, Punya (my co-head), volunteers and the organizers . We had planned the meals with the school ensuring the school food policy was taken care of, this is again one area where ethics came into the picture.

We decided on the meals with the chef and Vishal sir , everything was set , but at the last moment the school chef was not there, he did not come back on time after his Diwali leave and was not even picking up the call as well. The school informed us about this situation just 2 days prior to the event. This led us to panic a lot. However, I knew that panic was not the solution but the action was. Maharsh , Punya and I then decided to go to different places and check out for food options , but we found meals to expensive or we did not like them. Hence we decided to get the food made by the school support staff itself because we did not have a lot of budgets. We fixed the menu with the school but got our socials meal from outside. So then I had to coordinate with the cater’s as well as the school accountant as I g=had to get payment done . One area where I faced struggles was that my co-head and volunteers did not turn up one day 2 and I had to manage everything alone .

But as they as at the end of the day your efforts will always pay off, I won the best Oc member award again ! This was a moment of pride for me and I was thrilled, the entire OC was proud of me for playing my role as a head well and handling the problem effectively.

One thing that I took back from the event is that no matter how effective your plan A is you should always have a plan B, because you never know what can happen when.

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Tree Plantation @ K.V Central school

October 4, 2016 Manan Sanjay Shah Manan Sanjay Shah

Sunday mornings usually are very lazy for me, I wake up late and take a lot of rest however this Sunday was different. Me and my friends decided to go for tree plantation, we kept our laziness aside and wanted to work for conserving nature and showed dedication for this activity by reaching for the plantation on time. With advancing time nature is constantly depleting and all my friends thought we need to do something about it. And then came this beautiful opportunity to serve nature. What best activity we can possibly perform to preserve nature? Planting trees! The tree plantation activity was the initiation of Nature Club a prominent environmental organization.

After completing the activity I can say I have successfully developed a new skill which is “Environmental care”. Initially I was not comfortable being around mud because it made me feel disgust and I felt dirty. As the whole activity of tree plantation revolves around mud, I started regretting my decision of coming for this activity however as I thought about the greater good that I will be able to plat trees so I decided to work in the mud and I actually felt really great about it. I started liking the idea of working in mud.

The biggest problem I faced was when I decided to plant bamboos. Bamboos needs to injected into the soil deep. For doing that I needed to hit the bamboo with big rocks and push the bamboo deep in the soil. However after each push injecting the bamboo deeper in the soil became hard. Also I cut my hands while hitting the bamboo with rock. However after multiple attempts I thought the task became easy and I almost felt that I had mastered a new skill. After sometimes I felt tires so I decided to take help from one of the member of nature club and some of my friends. With our combined efforts we successfully planted around 15 bamboos.

While planting some of the tress we needed to remove the plastic wrapping it had on its roots. All of my friends felt lethargic while planting the trees so we removed the plastic wrapping and threw it in the mud. But then our ethics and morals came in between and we thought that it would be hypocrisy as one side we are planting trees and on the other side polluting the same soil with the plastic. So we collected all the plastic in one place and threw it in a bin.

During this activity the member of nature club taught us about plantation of plants in detail. Also I see how this activity has a global consideration as I am working for nature which is facing threat globally. With all my small steps I am trying to make an impact in preserving nature. As we know the saying “Many water drops collectively make an ocean!”

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Debate Competition

October 4, 2016 Manan Sanjay Shah Manan Sanjay Shah

I participated in the Inter House Debate Competition that was a part of the Literature and Humanities Fest. The topic of the debate was “Capital Punishment” and our house had to speak against the topic.

This was a new challenge for me as I was not confident of my public speaking and debating skills however the competition gave me the opportunity to enhance these skills. I believe these skills are a crucial part of our lives. However, it was hard for me to talk against this topic as I found capital punishment justified for major heinous crimes. So finding something to speak against it, I had to focus on the ethical implication of capital punishment and how it is unjust on the emotional level. This gave me the opportunity to shift my method of analyzing content, now I found the emotional arguments in real life situations.

Working with a team was different experience as in usual debates I had to work alone, but this time I worked collaboratively with my team. This way I was exposed to a bunch of new ideas which I possibly could not think of. Working collaboratively also made our work even more productive as we had more points from everyone and each one of the member worked on a different sector of the team, for example I worked on rebuttals, others worked on collection suitable examples and etc.

According to me I showed perseverance for this competition as for a week I collected as much data possible on the topic I also thought of arguments which the opposite team could come with and I analysed the rebuttals for those arguments. I also was also like a mentor to the young members in the team and I pushed them to do more efficient research.

The topic of the debate dealt with an issue of global significance itself. The act of capital punishment is a very debatable topic and also a sensitive one due to the ethical considerations of killing a person. Working on it and evaluating the best course of action dealt with the global significance.

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Learning Camps

October 3, 2016 Abhishek Janakkumar Shah Abhishek Janakkumar Shah

I agreed to volunteer for learning camps but that was not something that I was looking forward to. My friend explained me why it was important to invest in the education of these children and how much impact it can produce, so I did. I’m very self-oriented, and I only tend to do things that I like or I would learn from. But I decided to do this purely out of service.

I engaged in this activity of teaching them things that they would have not learn from their surroundings. I was able to engage a large group of 50 students, and that was quite an achievement for, since I have not always been confident about addressing a group of people. I also understood how privileged I was, and yet I used to complain about the smallest of things. I decided that I will put myself in the shoes of these kids and then look at the kind of problem I would be in.

I did Learning Camps for more than a month, and I began to consider that I took the right decision to be a part of the Learning Camps. As it started, I also began reflecting on what am I doing and how are they benefitting from this concept of Learning camps.

I had a discussion with Riya over phone and shared my opinions. We realised that it was not possible to give them full-fledged education of maths/sciences/english but we could instead give them crash courses – which they would love to attend and learn substantially from the process. And we also realised that these subject mostly won’t be relevant to them in their life.

So we redefined the goals of Learning camps to make them understand the world we live in, to equip them with the right kind of thoughts and mindset, to break stereotypes and prompt actions of social welfare.

If we could just make a dozen of kids good citizens and people of good character, that would make our efforts worth it.

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Student Council

October 3, 2016 Abhishek Janakkumar Shah Abhishek Janakkumar Shah

Now, I had started to push myself to everything that was out of my comfort zone. I had the responsibility to effectively communicate the Grade’s issues and resolve it in a manner that would be reasonable to the school body as well as the student body. One of my strengths was that I was more approachable by my classmates, which would facilitate the required communication.

I was hesitant at first to speak out my thoughts and opinions, in the presence of Bhumika ma’am/Vardan sir and people from different grades that I have never talked to. I was insecure about the fact that I would be judged. No matter how may times I have tried to convince myself that it doesn’t matter what people think, I was unable to be fairly open about myself. I used to speak only when I thought I had a really great point to be made.

As sessions passed by, I had started to become more vocal. I learnt that from the students of younger grade – that although they make a repetitive or baseless point, they do it with confidence. I did see a huge improvement in me over a few months, and I am really grateful for that.

Another key point to note were that I had made the decision to miss playtime to attend Student Council. I still sometimes feel that it would be great to have one more playtime in the cycle, but then I congratulate myself to choose long-term growth over short-term temptations.

One of the ethical implications that came my way were to let go of my personal bias in any decision that were to be made. For instance, the decision to not play football in assembly was taken, which really affected me, but it did make sense that it had hurt many people and should thus be discontinued.

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Surat Cage Football 2016

October 3, 2016 Abhishek Janakkumar Shah Abhishek Janakkumar Shah

We had identified the gap in the market and the idea was ready – but months passed by and we hadn’t gone beyond planning. We investigated the idea, its viability, its lucrativeness, the market and the demand. Made a rough plan for marketing, operations and finance. It seemed doable and we gained confidence.

However, we were afraid to implement the event a large scale, since if not successful, we might incur a great loss. The idea was getting delayed but then, we made up our mind and made a firm decision.

Initially we were planning to do it in a society, which had a good concrete ground, and almost perfect for a cage football tournament. However, we faced rejection from the society’s secretary despite several attempts. This what seemed as an obstacle turned out to be one of the main reasons for the event’s success.

We finalised another ground but because this was owned by a for-profit sports cafe, it demanded huge costs. It would cut our profit margins substantially, however we were destined to do it for the experience and learning. We also increased the registration prices.

We were able to held a tournament of 32 football teams, with city-wide marketing. The players seemed satisfied with the how the event was conducted and that pleased me.

Doing business with the owner of the cafe, we learned tremendous number of things. I learnt the importance of maintaining good relations with the one in power, I learnt that people are not the way they showcase themselves, I learnt analysing what people say from a business perspective, I learnt negotiating, I learnt many skills particular to organising a sports tournament, and much more. We also acquired practical knowledge of various things of that business concepts I had studied.

The first time we went to approach a firm for sponsorship, we were really unconfident and if they said they were not interested, we would just nod and go away. It felt very uncomfortable to go to so many shops and face rejection. I just didn’t want to do it anymore. But we continued thinking that there’s no harm just asking. We began having better sponsorship pitch after every rejection, we persuaded greater, analysed our shortcomings and improved the benefits we provided. I could say that if we had not continued due to initial rejections, the event wouldn’t have been successfully implemented.

I also identified that I had a thing for designing. I went on to design all the social media and print materials for the event, which attracted a lot of attention.

On-day crisis, we happened to arrive a little late at the venue, and we were supposed to hang 5 banners on the cage. We were able to put 3 banners before the first match, and one banner was supposed to be hung inside, where the match was going on. So during the half-time of the matches, we rushed inside with the ladder and somehow tied 2 sides. Then again in the next match, we tied another 2 parts. This way, we managed to save up on the turf-time.

We had only 12 hours of booking and 16 matches were scheduled very tightly that we couldn’t afford wasting time. So at various times, we shortened the half-time breaks, took the photo-session outside the cage, called all teams to report 1 hour before time, among others complete the matches in a timely manner.

We worked insanely hard in the last 3 days. Amidst the hassles, we forgot to print banners for one of the sponsor. When he got to know, he got very furious and said he wouldn’t bring the footballs and trophies that he had sponsored if his banner is not made. It was 10 in the night and all printing shops were closed. We were able to manage the print from a shop, which was 30km away.

What I learnt and experienced was way more than what I wrote in the reflection – all I can say is that I has made me competent to organise a even bigger and better event.

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Teacher’s day volunteering!

October 1, 2016 Priyam Manoj Joshi Priyam Manoj Joshi

On the teacher’s day, I along with other students of my grade volunteered to take classes in younger grades, so that the teachers could take a break for that day. We dressed up as teachers and then proceeded to organize fun learning interactive activities in grade 7. We designed one activity to test the math skills of the students, we divided the class and then conducted a quiz, the other activity was designed to test creativity and sales techniques. We asked to students to design an advertisement for a vacation in Maldives. After this, we organized a khokho and kabbadi game for the students.

Through this activity, I was exposed to multiple situations where I had to manage young students, I also had to think creatively to come up with activities which would keep the students interested but also, provided them a learning experience. I identified that while creative thinking for games and activities was a strength of mine, but I realized, that management skills could be something I could work on. I felt good about my creativity as the students told us that they really enjoyed the activities, but at certain times I felt helpless as I could not manage and pay attention to every student at the same time. Maybe if I had better management skills, it would’ve been an even more fluent and enjoyable experience.

This activity was a new challenge for me as I am not used to taking care of children and don’t spend a lot of time around children as I do not have a lot of cousins either. The experience wasn’t as terrifying as I had expected it to be as I had already asked a few of my friends ( who had done this before ) about how I should prepare and behave with the students, which made it easy to overcome this challenge. Through this challenge, I also learnt teamwork and creative thinking, as I had to work with 2 of my other friends prior to the activity to plan out the schedule and activity of the kids. I also learnt how to be open to ideas, as we had a lot of different ideas for the activities and to be patient with younger students. These skills will help me when I will repeat this activity or go to NGO schools to teach children or plan activities for other events.

I am usually comfortable with working with others as long as they have the same thinking patterns as I do, but it was not the case this time, which developed me to be more open minded which will help me when I am planning other activities, I also felt good that I could be patient and listen, but I still have a long way to go.

There were various ethical issues that I had to keep in mind, I had to be careful that I was behaving patiently and appropriately with the students, I also had to make sure that I was making the most efficient use of their time as well as ours which made us plan fun – LEARNING activities, I also had to be open minded so that there were no major verbal disagreements among the people who were planning the activities and to pay proper attention and heed to the instructions of the organizers. These issues made me feel like I was turning into a more patient person.

Overall, I had a fun new experience, which tested my creativity and social skills.

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Trip to Naggar.

October 1, 2016 Priyam Manoj Joshi Priyam Manoj Joshi

I belong to a family which absolutely LOVES travelling, so I had been on a lot of treks and trips in the north before I took this trip with my classmates. And just like I expected, this trip was also an amazing, spectacular and beautiful one.

As a part of our grade trip, we had decided to go to a beautiful place called ‘Naggar’ near Manali, as soon as I came to know about this, I was very excited as I had been to Naggar before and knew that it was an amazing town.

Even though it was my second time going to Naggar, this trip was one of the best treks I’d been to. We got involved in walks, activities, rides, sunsets and so on.

One of the challenges I faced in the trip was the immense walking and physical exertion. Especially, during our long trek to Rumsu village, I noticed myself getting very sick and exhausted. Since I am not a very athletic person and dont work out daily, I had some difficulty in maintaining my strength throughout the day. However, out of fear of missing out ( 😛 ) I still continued every single day despite my legs aching badly. I realised that I needed to work on my fitness. Luckily, we were taught yoga and exercises almost every evening, so I could incorporate those in my daily routine once I got back to surat.

One of the best things about the trip was the kindness of the local people, I had so much fun talking to them and knowing about the history of Rumsu, it showed me that despite having little resources, these people made the best of what they had and were very contended with it. They respected themselves, everyone around them, nature and especially their cultural values. We even saw the house and works of a very famous artist, we saw paintings, their rooms, the architecture, their books etc. And as someone who loves knowing about art and history, this was one of the highlights of my trip.

We also indulged in adventure activities, like skiing and tubing, as I am not a very adventurous person, this was a bit of a challenge for me, but since I had friends who were motivating me, I tried it anyway and had a LOT of fun! Turns out, we shouldn’t say no unless we have tried it.

Since, we were on a school trip to the himalayas, we had to be ethical and judicial when we were using our resources, we had to be careful that we did not waste too much food or supplies and kept everything clean.We tried not to use plastic bags and bottles, and to not waste too much electricity. Further on, we also had to make sure we did not litter as it would spoil our natural resources.

Since we were on a grade trip, it was important that we adjust as group members and not become very demanding, we had to cooperate with each other and share what we had for the common good. Also, all of us were happy to do that as this trip gave us a much needed break among the hustle of submissions and deadlines.

I was a new student, so this trip was very special to me as I made a lot of new friends, and memories which I am going to cherish for a life time, there were some conflicts among our classmates, but all of us resolved them with ease and understanding. I got to know a lot of people in my class in a way which I wouldn’t have in school, we heard horror stories, danced, celebrated new years, laughed, played cards and as someone who shys away from making new friends, this experience was truly eye opening for me.

Overall, this trip was a very memorable experience filled with adventure, historic knowledge, horror stories, yoga and fun!

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Book drive !

October 1, 2016 Priyam Manoj Joshi Priyam Manoj Joshi

Books are a man’s best friend. Ever since I was little, I’ve been an avid reader and imagining a world without books is next to impossible. On a recent visit to a government school, I was shocked to find that a school where hundreds of underprivileged kids studied had a shortage of books.

I was highly motivated to do something about this, so I decided to get involved in a book drive…but then I thought, why not do something close to home? I decided to organise my own book drive in my neighborhood. At first, I was really scared and lost as I didn’t know the process of how to collect books or where to donate the books I got. I asked a few people about book drives and prepared myself for this new challenge. I and a few of my friends planned carefully about how to approach people, which kind of books would be beneficial to the kids, which houses to visit, how to organize the books etc.

The next step was to find an NGO which would take our books, through some contact we found an NGO called “Yuva Unstoppable” who were ready to take our donations.

We decided to make posters and talk to people to spread awareness about how there is a very dire lack of resources for kids in our city.We made colorful, eye catching, bright posters with slogans about books and the necessity of reading in everyone’s life, including the ones less privileged. While researching and preparing for what to say, I was able to increase my awareness about resources, NGOs, the kind of resources needed according to the target population etc.

When we did go around to people’s houses, I found that people weren’t as open-minded as I thought they would be, it took a lot of convincing for people to even give us books they weren’t using, they would rather give it to the ‘pastiwala’. This was a little disappointing for us, and also increased our work load as we had to go to a lot more houses than we had planned as we did not get enough books at first. I realized that maybe I had to work on my convincing and public speaking skills, and I also realized that I should have a backup plans. However, as we had a group of people working together, we eventually managed to collect some books.

We continued this task for a month, this was a little difficult as all of us had time scarcities due to daily work and studies. But, we were committed to making this book drive happen as we had given our word, so with utmost perseverance we collected books whenever we had little time here and then.

Our next task was to segregate all the books according to genres, languages etc. We had to plan very carefully about this, and we, as group members had a lot of conflicts about this but finally we segregated it and sorted it out.

We finally donated all these books to an organization called “yuva unstoppable” and it was an amazing experience to contribute a little to make their lives more knowledgeable and interesting.

This activity made me realize a very important skill which I needed to develop – my communication skills within a team. I was not able to correctly portray what I expected from my friends and thus there were problems in our planning which led to last minute hassles. Further on, when there were conflicts about making any decisions like how to approach people, making posters or other forms of advertising etc, I was not able to make quick decisions. I observed that this area is something I needed to work on.

One of the ethical considerations I had to keep in mind was that, since I had committed to this cause, I could not fall back as I had given my word to the NGO, I also had to make sure that the books were of decent quality as they were to be given to other people to use and could not just be of bad quality.

Also, as a leader of a team, it was important that I stay rational and calm, and make smart decisions while respecting my teammates and their ideas.

Despite shortcomings and hurdles in our plan, I genuinely felt good doing this activity. I had lots of fun making posters, and felt proud when we collected a large number of books. Though it was a very small scale activity, I learnt important lessons on team work and Books impart knowledge in a way media never can, it improves language, stretches our imagination and implants new ideas in young minds. It is a necessity and the lack of available resources for underprivileged is a global problem and this small scale activity made me realize what a great problem this is and that we should all take steps to bring solutions to it.

With Nikita ( representative of yuva unstoppable ) segregating last batch of books.

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Reflection on ASTH- A Step Towards Humanity

September 14, 2016 Avina Umashankar Agarwal Avina Umashankar Agarwal

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).

1^st flash mob: Independence Day celebration (15^th 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 14^th 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 14^th 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 15^th 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 (3^rd) 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!

2^nd flash mob: Teacher’s Day (5^th 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!)

Our third and final Mob: 10^th 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.

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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