What was Global Odyssey? Global Odyssey was a fair organised by Grade 11 Business Management and Economics students. The event was held on the 14th of February and complimenting the date, our theme was ‘Cherry Blossom’. With fun-filled games, luscious food and an outstanding variety of tote bags, jewellery, etc, the event lived up to its tagline “Fun, Food & Fashion.” For me, however, it was more than just a fair; it was a learning experience, a way to explore my strengths and weaknesses and help me learn the vital skills of self-management and communication.

LO 1: Identify own strengths and develop areas for growth

I had two roles in the event, decoration (as a part of the decor team) and selling on the day of the event. We started the decor around 1 month before the event because there was much work to do. During this month, I learned that one of my strengths is implementing ideas and finding quick ways to do time-consuming work. For instance, one of the tasks given to me was to cut out a large number of cherry blossoms from paper. When I initially learned the process, it was quite time-consuming, however, with every flower, I got more efficient and found a quicker way to do the same process which saved me half the time it took earlier. Coming to selling, I had taken up the responsibility of making 75 pieces of cookie cake (a sweet dish which is a mixture of cookie and cake) and this is where I faced the major challenge, time management. I had planned that I would be making the dough 2 days before the event so that one day prior, all I had to do was bake and I would not have to panic. However, everything did not go as planned. 2 days before the event, I completely forgot to make the dough because of other tasks and the night before the event I was in a complete panic zone. In the end, I did manage to make 60 pieces but the major takeaway from this event was that I needed to learn time management. Ever since this incident happened to me, I now try to start work on time and complete it before the deadline so that I don’t have to panic in the end. I also learnt that panicking can lead to ineligible work and now that I have started to do my work on time, I can see the difference in quality.

LO 2: Demonstrate that challenges have been undertaken, developing new skills in the process

Since 14th February is Valentine’s Day, we planned on a marketing strategy that we would give a combo of roses, cookie cake and chocolate-coated strawberry for Rs. 120 for which we had already made the purchase. However, on the day of the event, we were shocked when our teachers strictly denied us to give out roses and all our roses were taken away. We had spent a lot of money on them and this was one of our major setbacks because covering the amount was difficult and it was only possible to cover if we sold everything. This is where were understood that we had to up the game and change strategy to communication. We gathered all our friends and persuaded the teacher to visit our stall, the rest fell into place pretty smoothly. An hour and a half into the event, we were all sold out, that too with a profit of Rs. 2000+. This is when I realised the power of communication skills because simple word of mouth or persuading helped us sell very rapidly.

Another problem we faced during the planning was a lack of communication. We were all on different pages about the items we were going to sell, etc; to solve this, we found a simple way out i.e. making a WhatsApp group. However simple it may sound, it makes communication way easier and everyone is aware of all the things going on which makes the work way easier.

LO 3: Demonstrate how to initiate and plan a CAS experience

While the idea of keeping a stall in a school event seems to be a quick and easy task, we had to put a fair amount of effort through the process. Initially, we had decided that we were going to keep 2 food items, one sweet and one savoury, and 1 drink on our stall, however, we had to change that plan due to many factors. This happened quite many times in the process where we spent time thinking about our items, logo, and most importantly price. We wanted our products to stand out, we wanted our USP. To organise ourselves, we made a doc and wrote down all our options; finally, we found our USP, chocolate-coated strawberries. This was one item we were sure would sell because everyone was crazy about it and surprisingly paid a good amount for it too. We were proved correct on the day of the event because this, was our best-selling item and we got many great reviews. It was tiresome work because we had to melt the chocolate in a double boiler to serve it but it was all worth it in the end.

LO 4: Show commitment to and perseverance in CAS experiences

As I stated earlier, we had started the decor process 1 month before the event. Since it was an event integrated with business management and economics, we spent many of these subject slots on the preparation of this event. For one month, I was working for the event every day and we made significant process throughout. No matter how fun the process was, it did get monotonous in between; sitting in the same room for an hour doing nothing but fold papers got tiring and also a bit dull and this is where commitment and perseverance came into the picture. To make the work more interesting, we would put on music or talk or just ‘trust the process’ and this is what helped me stick to the work. Seeing everything come together at the end gave us motivation to work.

LO 5: Demonstrate the skills and recognize the benefits of working collaboratively

As I mentioned earlier, we had a team for decor consisting of 20-25 people. Having a team was a great boon because it helped us complete all our tasks on time and especially helped us in multitasking. We had divided roles in the team such that all the work was taken care of simultaneously. Our team leader had all the work planned for us which combined all our skills and ended up with a final decor which looked exquisite and exactly how we pictured it to be.

On the day of the event when we had set a stall, collaboration helped us immensely because we had a lot of customers coming together and we needed efficiency. We had divided the work amongst ourselves such that one was given the responsibility of accounts, one was given cookie cake, one melted the chocolate and so on. This helped us significantly during the event because, in the end, we managed to sell everything out.

LO 7: Recognize and consider the ethics of choices and actions

While we were deciding on the price of our items, we ensured to keep a fair price for the consumers while keeping a fair profit margin for ourselves too. We made sure that we were fair to all our consumers and did not show bias to the people we know or are close to because ethics is very important when it comes to business. Our school also gave 2% of our profits to a non-governmental organization that works towards a good social cause.