Garba Fest

During the navratri festival in India, a few students from our school had organized a garba fest in our school. People were invited to come to our school and celebrate navratri together. In the garba fest, me and 2 of my friends had set a stall for cold cocoa and donuts which we sold to the participants and other organizers. Our aim was to raise funds to buy seeds and small plants which we would then plant in our city. After the fest was over, we bought seeds of different kinds and bought plantlings from a local garden shop and planted them in gardens and roadside to help the environment.

The main reason of why me and my friends decided to raise funds for plantation was because a few weeks before the activity we saw trees being cut down from the sidewalks of our area to make space for footpaths. This really got us motivated to protect the environment by planting more trees.

Although, I used to consider that business mangement was my strength, through this activity I came to realize that I still have a lot to learn in the practical application of the knowledge gained in business management. I recognized this weakness through the challenges that we faced while implementing our activity.

The main challenge that we faced was predicting the amount of sales we would have. For the event we had prepared around 100 donuts and 100 glasses of cold cocoa, however, during the event we encountered a shortage of donuts and excess of cold cocoa. Following this challenge, we increased the price of donuts from 30 INR to 50 INR to convert our weakness of low supply into a strength of high revenues. We found out that our customers did not liked the taste of cold cocoa and we had to reduce its price to 10 INR from 30 INR to be able to sell all the cold cocoa we had and not let it go to waste.

Due to the fact that there were 3 of us hosting this stall, we had divided the main work among ourselves. I was handing the financial part, which included getting sponsorship, managing payments from customers and estimating the total costs and revenues. Although, we had initially divided the tasks among ourselves, later we realized that we would have to work collaboratively to achieve the best results. This is why we went in pair for negotiating the terms of the sponsorship. I also helped my friend prepare the donuts to be save time. This activity really helped me realize the benefits of working together.

Ethics was an important part of our activity, especially because we had not decided how much of our profits would we invest for the benefit of environment and how much would we keep to ourselves. We thought we would be able to decide that better after the Garba fest was over, when we would know our profits. In the end we decided to invest all of our earnings because we had not really acquired a significant amount to divide between ourselves and for buying plantlings.

Overall, this activity was a great experience for me. It made me feel good about myself while planting the plantlings in the garden. It also helped me learn the importance of working in a group.