Duration: 5th August to 20th August

Community service was a weekend program where students from various schools visited our school, learned and participated in many different activities like, arts and crafts, ICT, science projects, dance, sports like – football, basketball, frisbee and also gymnastics.

I volunteered for dance where I worked with 26 of my batchmates where we divided ourselves in different position and assigned 2 rows of students to each volunteer. 4 main dance group leaders were assigned by our mentors so that we can easily follow the steps taught by the groups leaders and then teach those steps to the participated students. Teaching the dance steps to the students was a bit challenging because each and every students was way different, it felt challenging because most of the students were only communicating in Gujarati so I communicated with them in Gujarati so that they can understand me in a better way. On first day I was little tense and was doubting myself that will I be able to teach them properly because teaching a stranger needs patience.

LO 1 – Identify own strengths and develop areas for growth

During this program I identified my weakness. While teaching them dance I realised that I do not have patience, not having patience always makes me cranky and at that particular time I realised that I have to control myself and stop being cranky because students have come here to learn something and I have to teach them, those little kids helped me overcome my weakness and taught that being patient is the most important thing. Now I’m aware of my weakness and I have overcome it I feel super relaxed and calm because having patient really helps in solving many major problems as well. I believe that it is very important to know our strengths as well as weaknesses because it helps us in moving a step forward to overcome it and also helps us in our progress.

LO 4 – Show commitment to and perseverance in CAS experiences

Attending the program every weekend and teaching them dance was a commitment, waking up early and reach school by 8:30 was a bit difficult task to do because usually I always wake up around 10:00 on weekends and reaching school by 8:30 was a task for me. But I still did my best and was punctual on every weekend because students were more excited to learn something new in our sessions and seeing their excitement made me feel that I should contribute and put in my efforts to make them feel special and be there. Seeing their happy faces and pretty smiles made me really happy and energized towards my task.

LO 5 – Demonstrate the skills and recognize the benifits of working collaboratively

Working with others generally easy for me because I like to engage in group activities more rather than completing the task alone and get bored. It was easy working with others because dividing ourselves amongst the students as per the language we speak, basically there was an equal ratio of students speaking Hindi and Gujarati so each volunteer was assigned number of students who speak the same language as they does, which made the cooperation really smooth and easy for both students as well as FS volunteers. But we also as a group attended each student and tried to cooperate with them very politely so that they can rely on us and can learn much more than dance in this entire service.

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

Looking at the situation of the children from government schools, I realized that I belong to a privileged family who provides me best education, a luxurious life to live with all the amenities and fulfill my wants easily but those students didn’t had the same thing that I have, this community service program in FS provided me a chance to spend time with children and still be happy without the luxury. This experience made me realize that luxury is not what makes us happy but being around our loved ones, doing our favorite tasks make us happy.