The Time I was really Down to Earth
The Government of India had initiated to build an artificial forest which was named “Janki Van” and we had to plant saplings in that area. We started our journey at 7 in the morning and left the city by school bus. We reached the place of plantation at around 10.30 AM and started to work after a short tour of the whole project.
It was the first time I was planting saplings and found that it is not as simple as it seems. Planting saplings was quite difficult and I had to get out of my comfort zone to do so. I thought it would be really fun and easy, but no it wasn’t. We had to dig in some places and sow the plant there. We also had to carry the plants from one place to another which was a bit tiring. As I did this activity first time in my life, it was completely uncomfortable for me to plant the saplings. Putting all dirty, wet, soiled saplings under the ground and then cover it with sand was quite unhygienic and awkward for me.
I thought this activity might be boring however it wasn’t. I quite enjoyed it. The reason behind my participation in this activity was to expose myself to a different subject; which was the plantation. My aim of going to the trip was to gain knowledge the way farmers work, what are the processes they use to plant the saplings, do they use pesticides or chemical fertilizers etc. This helped me to explore an agricultural aspect. I learned many things about myself after doing this activity including my strengths and weakness and where I need to improve. The strength I noticed about me was endurance; I worked for 5 hours without much tiredness. As I mentioned earlier,for this activity i had to step out of my comfort zone which became a great weakness of mine while doing the activity. However, I felt good, after doing this activity I would like to be more open-minded towards different things and conditions.
Without collaboration, we could not do this activity. Our coordination helped us to plant nearly 100 plants, It was a great pleasure after doing so. I was the person who had never planted one tree in my whole life and suddenly planting these many trees was an honor itself. So therefore YES, this was a successful activity.
hool coordinator and gave a brief idea of what we intend to do, surprisingly she appreciated it a lot and motivated us to implement it. A Flash mob is a large public gathering at which people perform a random act or a dance and then disperse. It is more of a shock to the audience. Knowing that we had only one day to choreograph the dance, learn it, and teach other members seemed tough however we knew that if the four of us work together we would definitely make it, and we did. From that day itself we started working REALLY HARD! We needed at least 15 members however nobody was ready to join us at such a short notice, many thought that we were likely to fail as we just had a day to practice. We our parents, relatives,neighbor and friends gathered outside school. We were glad that they believed in us. Back then, we were a group of non-dancer and dancers, who had put all the efforts possible to take a step towards humanity and bring a change by increasing awareness in the society. When the day arrived we realized that our event was a huge success and the hard work paid off. It’s not important whether we danced well or not it’s important whether we were able to gather people’s attention or not. And I am very proud to say that we gathered the attention of the whole mall.
give up, because we knew we are not alone, we are a team and we are always there to support each other no matter how tough the situation is. These were the benefits of working together as a team. I took up a lot of challenges, I did things which I had never done before such as: speaking and singing in front of at least 500 people, dancing (which I had never done before on such a huge platform), organizing the whole event and making this spontaneous idea successful, motivating the team members at every stage. I had took up the responsibility of a leader which was very challenging but worth a learning experience for media knew my strengths such as: organizing, managing, creativity etc. these helped me gain more confidence. As our first flash mob was on religion and cast we tried to show that there is no such thing like cast and religion, it is the ideologies of the people who create different groups, but in the end we are human beings and we have to have unity within us and each other so that we could face all the problems together. We took this issue on Independence Day because we wanted that with the celebration of this auspicious day we spread another message which can is as important as independence. Independence is nothing without unity between people of one country, one nation and to bring that unity back and erase the gaps of difference, casts and religions we decided to start small and organise this event in a mall where could easily find people of all casts and all religions.
R ALL.
o our group members about why this issue is so important to create awareness of and why we are doing the flash mob on the first place. This helped them with a better understanding of what and why we are actually doing this… By this we saw a lot of improvement in our group members as the days passed. This was mainly because they really wanted to help make a change and so they cooperated with us at every stage. It was a challenge for us to manage and teach all the 45 members of our group. However we (heads) took this responsibility as a new learning experience and tried to put the best efforts. There were many problems which took place during the event such as: the sound system did not work properly which might have led to problems in communication. However, as we could not do anything about the sound system on the spot we made sure we keep this mistake in mind for our next flash mob. This time we couldn’t even imagine that we gathered the attention of almost a 1000 people who were eager to watch us perform. If we do not consider the problems which we faced during the event, I think that the event was a great success as the main purpose was to gather the attention of the audience and spread aware
ness to a larger audience.
uded stunts and more complicated dance steps to gather audience’s attention. As we selected the best dancers, this time we were just a group of 20 people. This was a huge challenge which we took up as we also had exams coming up in the month of October. However, we were committed and determined enough for this activity and managed our time well in order to work in a balanced way. We took up this issue because we wanted to empower girls and women (teachers and parents) working and studying in our school in order to fulfil the purpose of starting small. We all worked collaboratively during practices which showcased our hard work and teamwork during the performance. We all had different strengths which played a major role during the whole organisation of this event. It’s my strength that I have a good grasping power and that I can also choreograph dances which helped us during the initiation stages of this flash mob.
e/plant is one of the most important parts of our life… And so to start small I volunteered to engage myself to work for an issue which has a global significance and to give a helping hand to the workers who are not only helping themselves by planting but also helping us indirectly. We began our journey on 18 July 2015. It was basically a one day trip however, I felt like I had done work which is done in 2 days. It was really very exhausting, as after coming back home, my body ached badly. But I felt proud that I had done something good for the environment and for the people.
‘t have a lot of stamina as there were times when we had to take plants from a certain area and put them where they had to be planted. Walking with the heavy weight of the plants was not easy as the distance was long. The body ache next day made me realize how my body was not that fit to be able to adapt to such conditions.
lastic from the plant before placing them in the pit. During these 4 hours I was very determined as I wanted to do everything it takes for the betterment of this area. We humans have been so brutal and greedy that we harm the things which keep us alive. It was a challenge for me as I was never used to such exhausting activities the humid climate made it much more difficult for us to work. However, there were times when the workload was divided among the group members which we worked collaboratively. This helped us regain our energy to some extent and help others do as well.
