October 2016 – CAS 2017

First Winter Trip..! ❤️

October 19, 2016 Riyaa Zenish Ruwala Riyaa Zenish Ruwala

Genuinely treks, adventurous trips, travelling and RIYAA these four words don’t really go well with each other. For an introvert and unadventurous person like me hiking and trekking trips would be the last options on my list (probably if I wished they wouldn’t even exist on the list :P). However, as a part of our long-term CAS trip ( and also as our winter trip), we planned to go to Naggar, a settlement in the Kullu district surrounded by magnificent mountain ranges.

Initially, I wasn’t convinced to go on this trip but after having a time trying to convince me my friends finally did it; I was all set to GO (I still don’t know how they even managed to convince me cuz I can give people a really tough time ;P). It might sound weird but after some time I myself started taking interest in the trip and was also getting excited about it (as it was my first trip with my newly formed Fountainhead family <3). But immediately after the meeting regarding our schedule for the trip with Gaurav Punj (our trip organiser), only with the thought of travelling for 10 hours in the bus and the span of the trip, I started feeling homesick. All of a sudden all the excitement just vanished into thin air and I just become more and more anxious.

But in no time those 10-hour road trip and a long train journey came to end. Somehow I just managed to survive the travelling part of the trip [ 🙁 ]. The major challenge apart from my fear of travelling (mainly because I suffer from motion sickness) was vigorous physical activities and exertion. Here my physical fitness was put to test. Even Though I had a really low stamina I was committed to waking up every day and go for the walks and treks (optional or compulsory). After my very first trek I was completely exhausted and my feet at that time hurt really bad. But after two days I was getting used to it and the after effects were slowly reducing.

That one day that Rujuta Diwekar came to visit us on our trip, she made us do YOGA. After that session (which I really really really wished I hadn’t attended) I realised that I had a really low physical fitness and me badly I needed to incorporate physical activities into my daily routine once I get back to surat.

Apart from all those challenges that I faced and overcome, I also had a really good time on the trip. We one day visited this place in Manali, where we indulged ourselves in various activities like skiing and tubing. Secondly, we also visited this village Rumsu and an Art Gallery, both of which gave me an insight into the people, their way of living and culture of the Rumsu village. The portraits and painting in the art gallery were definitely one of their own kind. Moreover, the art gallery gave us important insight into the life and work of a famous artist, Nicholas Roerich.

As a part of or trip, we also had to maintain environmental ethics. Naggar was a beautiful place and also an Indian heritage we always had to be careful that we don’t throw our plastic bottle, trash and plastic bags here and there and make sure that they are disposed correctly (not just because we were told to do so by our teachers and guide but as a literate and responsible citizen it was our duty).
Lastly, my overall experience was really good. This being my first winter trip I made a lot new memories that I will cherish for the rest of my life I learned a lot about my myself and other things (Like giving a reality check on my physical strength 😛 and enlightening with the culture and the way of living in Naggar and other places in the Himalayan mountain range).

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Ride With Pride against Breast Cancer (CAS Project)

October 19, 2016 Vanshika Manoj Agarwal Vanshika Manoj Agarwal

Ride with pride was a cycling event organised to create and spread awareness about breast cancer. The planning of the event began on 25th of Jan when we came up with the idea of organising a cycling event for our CAS project. The event catered to all the three strands of CAS i.e. creativity was where we organised a cycling rally for a cause that had never been done before. The activity was in the sports cycling and service was looked at since the primary purpose of the event was to cater to creating awareness about the detection and prevention of breast cancer. The initial target for the event were students from various schools however as we discussed our idea with our parents and our mentors, they guided us to help make the event open for all. This rally was inspired by Pinkathon. Since it was a rally to create awareness about breast cancer, we chose a date near women’s day which was on the 8th of march. 6th of March was the ideal date since it was a Sunday and it marked the beginning of the woman’s week. This project not only helped us accomplish all the learning outcomes of CAS but also gave us immense insight into people from different backgrounds, what kind of problems they face and gave us a lot of experience.

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Learning outcome 1: Working with each other and coordinating all day long got us extremely weary of each other. We lost our temper very often at each other and that led to many misunderstandings. This helped us realise our lack of patience and coping with each other’s spontaneous decisions became easier once we became aware of it. It was important for us to know our weaknesses because it was the realisation that helped us work better as a team. We realised that when there was so much work to be done, not everything could be discussed before any action was taken and hence it helped us save time and enabled us to work efficiently.

Learning outcome 2: The most challenging part about organising this event was for us to actually realise its purpose. There were many issues that put up difficulties but the most important one was to not deviate from our motive. None of us had any prior experience at organising an event at this scale and one of our major problems was trying to get our message through to as many people as possible to join us in our cause. We overcame this by not losing out on hope and constantly pushing ourselves to figure out various ways through which we could publicise this event. The lessons we learnt were to not delay any work for later and that there are always end moment emergencies that one needs to be prepared for later. This challenge not only gave us a better sense of organisation and time management but also enabled us to develop as people and helped us discover new skills as well. Being students of Business Management, we incorporated the classroom knowledge into the planning and organisation which led us to make smarter decisions and helped us with better execution.

Learning outcome 3: Throughout the planning stage, it was very difficult to manage between planning and school but since I was usually able to manage time well, it did not prove to be very tedious. Initiation was not very difficult because we started out with a small idea but as the planning progressed, the idea evolved and then the planning became difficult because none of us was exactly clear on the idea since our point of views were different and constantly changing with each new development in the plan. Initiating and planning anything in the future will be much easier now that we have experience with coordination and organisation. It is important to know how to plan and initiate activities because it teaches one leadership which is always helpful.

Learning outcome 4: The amount of hard work that was required on a daily basis was one thing that troubled us a lot. We had to set dates for the finalisation of some prospects and meeting those required a lot of perseverance and commitment. Initially, it felt exhausting but gradually we realised how essential it was to be regular and punctual. Showing perseverance and commitment was essential because we had to work and coordinate with people outside and make sure that they were committed to the work we gave them.

Learning outcome 5: Working with others is generally easy for me because I do not feel shy about expressing my opinions. Hence while working towards this activity, my friends and I benefitted out of the team work not only for the project but individually too. Working in a team helped reduce our workload and the fact that the team understood each other’s stress proved to be very helpful. There were occasions where we had to coordinate with someone who was extremely irregular and would not pick up the phone and our work would get stuck but we had no choice but to put up with it. Working collaboratively along with my co-organisers was important for all the planning to be done on time and of adequate quality. Setting up appointments and creating awareness was something which would be impossible for an individual to do and hence teamwork and trust seemed to be very crucial for the event.

Learning outcome 6: The issue of global importance tat we undertook was creating awareness about breast cancer. This issue is globally important because of every year, almost 5 lakh women die of breast cancer due to untimely detection and hence it is an issue of extreme global importance. Knowing about global issue make us more aware of what’s going on in our surrounding and makes us knowledgeable and cautious. Creating awareness about this issue at such a huge scale gave me immense happiness and satisfaction and helped me evolve as a better person and do my bit as a human.

Learning outcome 7: Initially, despite us starting out with just the motive of organising a CAS project, along with the way, we became aware of the true purpose of this project, which was for creating awareness. There were times when we deviated and it took a motivational talk or two by our parents to put us back on track. The ethics involved with this activity were to, along with the cyclists, create a healthier and safer environment and do what we committed. The other ethics involved was to provide financial support for patients with breast cancer who could not afford the treatment. Doing this activity gave me a deeper insight into the conditions that a lot of the people who couldn’t afford treatment were subjected to and doing this activity and becoming a part of the change made me feel very content.

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TRIP TO NAGGAR

October 19, 2016 Tiruja Vatsal Naik Tiruja Vatsal Naik

The trip to Naggar was one of the most cherished trips I have had with my friends. The journey to Naggar was long but enjoyable. I made so many new friendships on that trip and learned many new things about my peers. I am not the one for adventurous trips that involve trekking and exploring, but I thought it would be a new fun experience so joined it with my friends. We stayed at the Naggar castle which was home to the King and Queen but is now furnished into a hotel. We learned a lot about the history of Naggar which was interesting to know.We went for morning treks. For me, it was very exhaustive but serene. The surroundings were very beautiful.

Through this the learning outcomes that I achieved are:

LO 1 Identify own strengths and develop areas for growth: I realized that I developed a new interest towards hiking and realized that it wasn’t as exhausting as it looked but instead was very calming and relaxing. I realized that I did have enough capacity and stamina in me to complete a trek however the one thing I needed to improve on was the speed at which I hiked.

LO 2 Demonstrate that challenges have been undertaken, developing new skills: One day we went for snow adventures where we did skiing. It was a new experience for me and I had a lot of fun doing it.I had never done yoga before but we had 2 yoga sessions during the trip. All in all the trip was very informative and opened me to take up new challenges and gain new experiences.
LO 5 Demonstrate the skills and recognize the benefits of working collaboratively: There times when while trekking some of us got left behind and needed more help and motivation and in such times everyone else stopped and helped that person and tried to get them to reach the end of the trail. This trip made me understand how supportive and understanding my batch mates are.

LO 6 Demonstrate engagement with issues of global significance: We learnt a lot about how people living in hill stations got their income and how differently the houses were built there to avoid dangers for natural calamities. We also learned about how the global warming affects the temperature and climate there.

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CAS Project: Kabaddi Tournament

October 19, 2016 Anay Kalpesh Sanghvi Anay Kalpesh Sanghvi

My CAS project was to conduct a Kabaddi tournament at the school. It was a tedious job but eventually got completed. Kabaddi, a traditional Indian sport which was not so popular in our school and that was one of the biggest hurdles Nikunj and Varun and I had to tackle with.

It all started when we finally zeroed on the idea of having a KABADDI TOURNAMENT. We, as a group, had to plan a lot and therefore coordination was a must to complete the project. The planning process included the venue of the tournament, marketing techniques, create teams and the structure of the tournament. We thought that our assembly area would be a good place to conduct the tournament but that place was unavailable. We were prepared with a backup plan for the venue of the tournament so we changed it. We took the permission to conduct the tournament there and it was proved to be a fruitful decision.

Marketing techniques included poster display, online awareness and word of mouth. However, word of mouth marketing was something very difficult for us. All three of us had hesitations in public speaking, especially when we were unfamiliar with our audience. It was something that we overcame and successfully spread the message across. It has collaboratively aided us to attract participants for the tournament. Finally, 32 participants registered for the tournament but some of them bailed out from the tournament as soon as they got to know about the injuries caused by this game. It was a very disturbing to know about the bailouts but still we had 30 participants at the end. We also decided to provide rewards for winning team, best raider, and best defender.

The next stage was to collect the entry fee of the tournament. Continuous emails and texts were sent to participants in order to remind them about the entry fee. It was a challenge for us but constant dedication towards the activity helped us to complete this stage of the tournament as well.

Another stage of our tournament was to form teams through auctions. We decided to make 5 teams of 6 members. Deciding the structure of auction was a difficult task for us as we were not aware of how the auction actually looks like. We did research on “how auctions are conducted”. After a detailed research, we decided to select 5 players from the 30 participants and announced them as captains. Selecting 5 players and convincing them to be captains was difficult. At last, we were able to appoint 4 captains only.

To make it a successful event, I became the part of the tournament and became the captain. It was spontaneous and a sudden decision for me. It was a challenging task for me as I had to handle the post of the referee as well as of the captain of a team. Although my devotion towards event was at its optimum. We conducted the auctions where I did not get involved in any management process in order to be morally correct. If I would have been indulged into any management process while the auctions were conducted, it might have been unfair to all other captains.

Teams were finally made and now it was time to initiate the tournament. There were 5 teams but we were not able to decide the structure of the tournament. After giving an intense thought on it, we finally came up with the structure. Accordingly, the fixtures were called off, and matches were going to start, but due to miscommunication, there were some important school meetings scheduled during that time when we were actually going to conduct the matches. We urgently had to call the organizational meeting to finally change the dates of fixtures and to communicate it to each. Then finally the action began, and we were through with the execution process. It was a tedious job to be a referee, especially when we are unprofessional. There were numerous protests by the participants against our decisions but we managed it well. Being a captain simultaneously, added up the burden but I managed it well. I also took care that as a referee, I do not take decisions with biases in my mind. This has helped the best team to win. The tournament ended with a closing ceremony where we distributed the awards. I was feeling great with such a successful event conducted.

More than promoting our traditional sports Kabaddi; encouraging girls to play kabaddi, we as a group, wanted to do something for the society. This showed how we were engaging with a global issue of girls being underestimated as far as their sports performance is concerned. We wanted to promote equality through our event which I think we did it successfully by inviting participants irrespective of their gender. This really made me feel proud for my project as this might be a small step to not only encourage girls to play kabaddi but also to encourage equality between two genders but for the long term this attribute will help me to feel self-actualised.

We earned huge profits by the means of this event, and we decided to use this money into buying stationery for children who could not afford it. We earned 1000 rupees, almost one-third of the revenue, which we completely devoted for the donation. The fact that we again dealt with an issue of poverty which has been significantly severe in India, I feel more satisfied with this activity. Even donating small things such as stationery has been proved as a small step to mitigate this issue of poverty. This not only makes me feel proud but also excited to conduct more activities of this type.

The successful event followed by a heartening donation made my activity of some worth.

Evidence:

1. Images of a kabaddi match from our tournament

2. Donation of stationary in an orphanage

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Group Project- Garba Fest :D

October 19, 2016 Swani Sandip Shah Swani Sandip Shah

Garba Fest was an event whose idea was an instant spark that turned into fire. I was really excited and nervous because I had never-ever organised an event in my entire life. My companion and I organised this fest in the school which was open for everyone. The motive of this fest was to raise funds for the people who need the money to fulfill their basic needs and to create awareness about women empowerment.

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No matter how much cliché it sounds, but I feel that I cannot put this feeling of success into words.

Planning

We started to plan before a month and a half. First, we thought that we should take sponsors, then we thought let’s try without external help. Being an organiser is not an easy task. We were supposed to look from all the perspectives and think what will be best for the people and what will fulfil our aims. We divided our work into different departments and kept heads and volunteer who were responsible for each department because we thought that this event needs multiple great minds to come into action. We had to take interviews and decide the volunteer. Here the ethical part comes into the picture, we had to decide the volunteer based on their skills and special talents, rather than giving my friends an upper hand. We had to communicate and collaborate with all the heads about the venue, or the transportation or the menu of the food which we will be providing and even the decorations.

We also thought that an event like this should have a motive like it was a fundraising event. But we felt that people should go home by taking a message in their mind. Therefore, we decided to have a special performance by an organisation called ASTH, who would do a flash mob on something that has a global significance. As a result, we chose the theme Women Empowerment which is a very common theme across the world, especially in India. And while planning it out, we inferred that a speech on the regular stereotypical paradigms of society about women would leave a great impact on the audience.

Personally, one problem that I faced was in delegating the responsibilities to the volunteers. I am not usually a person, who takes leadership to do something; I usually like to decide things by myself. However, I tried to overcome that problem by myself and agreed to other’s suggestions as well. Overall, I felt that the planning required a lot of hard work but I got to know many people’s talent and also that sometimes people can surprise you.

Execution

On the day, we had to take care of a LOT of things; from decorations to food, to every small thing. Due to this, we were running all over the school like mad people. I was amused by my stamina, though, because even after working and arranging things for the whole day, I danced in almost the whole fest (which was like 2-3 hours long). * Shoulder tap*

Well, there were many people who thought that the event would not be so great. However, after looking at our decorations and arrangements, we had a list of people who wanted to buy the passes on the spot, which clearly made me more content.

Many sudden and unexpected crises occurred on that day, one of them was the problem with mosquitoes. Although we tried our best to not kill any mosquito or not make the people feel uncomfortable, due to the limitation of the venue, we were not able to do too much about it.

At the end, I looked at the lights and felt the atmosphere around me- which was full of smiles and liveliness and enjoyment.

Wake up with DETERMINATION, go to bed with SATISFACTION and HAPPINESS.

Feedbacks.

This quote truly describes my emotions after the event was over. Though there was a scope for improvement and the event would have been organised much better than it was, to a great extent I was satisfied.

Overall, I had fun and it was good to know that I also have some leadership skills in myself. And the money that was collected through the fest will further be used for a good cause. Two places we already used the money were- donation to ASTH and giving food to Bhikshuk Bhojan ( A place where poor people are provided food)

Representation of the views by few people who attended the Fest.

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CELEBRATING CHILDHOOD – BAL MELA⭐️️⭐️️

October 8, 2016 Riyaa Zenish Ruwala Riyaa Zenish Ruwala

Every single minute matters, every single child matters, every single childhood matters- Kailash Satyarthi » Read more

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GARBA CLASS

October 8, 2016 Kripa Hareshkumar Patel Kripa Hareshkumar Patel

Dancing is something which has always interested me. While doing Garba my interest and passion have increased consistently. The reason for choosing this form was to acquire the knowledge about the folk dance of my state Gujarat. Garba classes have helped me a lot to evolve as a dancer. It helped me to refresh and energize myself after going through a long and tiring day. The form which I was focusing on was ‘Dodhiya’.

I already had a basic idea of this dance style as I had learnt it four years ago, but just learning the basics wasn’t enough for me. I wanted to sharpen my skills along with learning more complicated forms of it like couple dance. I also wanted to increase my stamina and innovate my style of doing the steps. I attended the class for almost three months, six days a week for one hour each. In the first month, I focused on remembering the steps. Then, in the second month, I focused on developing my style and learning couple dance. Soon, I realised that my stamina increased with time, and I have improved flexibility.

Even though I have done this form before, I realised that I was weak in the high round continuous jump. So for one month I had to put a lot of efforts in learning it. I even got blisters on my feet, which made my journey a little difficult. Initially, my hectic schedule zapped all of my energy and at some point in time that affected my dance. For that, I decided to be active and be mentally free too. This strategy helped in focusing on the dance, and in achieving the goals

My second focus was couple dance. Couple dance requires a lot of coordination. For that, it became vital for me to practise every day. So, there was no chance of me missing even one class. Fortunately, my partner was my dance teacher, and his skills and energy were fantastic. When it comes to couple dance it is important that both the partners are compatible. So, while practising I have to compete and coordinate with my partner. My partner was very cooperative, he used to forgive my mistakes and helped me to better my skills. In the end, I achieved my goals and learned to manage my schedule correctly.

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Personal Profile-Vidushi Gupta

October 5, 2016 Vidushi Manish Gupta Vidushi Manish Gupta

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.

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ASTH-A Step Towards Humanity

October 5, 2016 Vidushi Manish Gupta Vidushi Manish Gupta

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.

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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.

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Internship@SDO_25/4/16

October 5, 2016 Parvashi Manish Naik Parvashi Manish Naik

By now, I had decided what career I wished to pursue. School gave us an opportunity to get an exposure to work with successful people and get to know about their jobs. I had applied for it and got to work with Ar. Abhishek Bhansali and Ar. Minal Bhansali at Span Design Organisation for a month roughly. Overall it was an amazing experience which made me confident to opt for this field and not any other field. I felt the difference between my perception about this career field before and after this internship. This internship means a lot to me because the things that I learnt here, the perspective shift that I experienced was amazing. This was the first step toward my journey from a student to an Architect. The early days went reading different books and knowing about the field. Getting book knowledge and exposure was one way to learn and open the doors of creativity. Being an anti-reader it was a little difficult for me to go about it. But then, I thought about perceiving it visually and getting to know about different structures, pros and cons of designing children bedrooms etc. After that, I got to do practical learning as well, where I accompanied some employees there to the site and measured all the bathrooms at the site. It wasn’t easy, I had to climb till the 8-9th floor using the staircase as the site wasn’t built and there was no elevator, then walking around all the dirt and cement, water spilled and other fragments lying all over the floor to take measurements. I learnt to be patient as well, I learnt that when you are learning something, the process won’t be easy, there will be a lot of difficulties that we have to face which requires patience and the zest of learning. Then, I was also taught to read different plans and know some basic terms about the field which are spoken. There, I came across to “Vastu Shastra”, which can regard them as ethics or rules that need to be considered according to the client’s beliefs. The most interesting part was to have interactive sessions with Minal Ma’am and get to know her journey and experience. I asked different questions and she answered all of them which helped me to get a better understanding and vanish my misconceptions and other myth about the field. I went with Abhishek Sir and one of his client for material selection. I got to know different properties of Marble and Granite. How they are different not only by other looks but their properties and purposes as well. We visited a shop where there not other materials like wood, ply, veneer, neolith, mdf etc. which had their unique looks and purposes. After all this, I was given an internship task to design a bathroom space according to the requirements. By the end of the task, I had to prepare a presentation about the experience and also present my idea about the task. There were different flaws that I came across which Minal Ma’am explained me and then I worked upon it and by the end of the task.Coming to what I learnt about myself is that I realised interiors was my strength at this stage as I got more exposure about it than architecture and what I learnt about other (Sir, mam and employees) is that determination and hardwork is what counts at the end. Till yesterday, I knew what field I will go in my future. By now, I know what I will be doing in my coming future.

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