CAS: Service 

Duration: 5th August to 20th August  

Community service is a programme initiated by our school for underprivileged children, wherein we help the underprivileged children indulge in various activities; both indoors – art and craft, ICT, science projects, dances; and outdoors – football, basketball, frisbee and also gymnastics. The program was a weekend programme where the underprivileged children from various schools visited our school, learned and participated in many different activities. 

There were many activists in which the students (us) could volunteer in, I personally enjoy doing dance thus, I volunteered to teach dance. There were 25 more volunteers like me. In which 4 of them were leading the dance sessions so that the sessions could function properly. Our task was to make sure that the sessions were working in order and also the children were learning but also at the same time having fun. Moreover, I made sure that the children felt connected to us and did not feel like we were different from them. We made them learn 3 different songs (bollywood). However, teaching comes with a lot of patience and communication skills. The children were mostly from the rural schools thus, they were comfortable with their mother tongue, gujarati. I was not very good at speaking in Gujarati which acted as a little barrier while teaching. The learning outcomes were:

LO2: Demonstrate that challenges have been undertaken, developing new skills in the process: 

As mentioned I did not speak gujarati so initially I was a barrier for me because teaching requires a lot of communication and in my case the weak link was communication but I knew broken gujarati because of which I was able to teach them and as the programme moved ahead I learned how to speak gujarati more than I knew before. I believe that the children were very cooperative and that they helped me learn how to speak gujarati. I learned give-and-take through this (me teaching them dance and them teaching me how to speak better Gujarati). Considering the fact that I have never taught anyone in Gujarati I did a quite good job. 

LO4: Show commitment to and perseverance in CAS experiences: 

I believe that throughout the programme I had been consistent considering that the school stays off on the weekends. For the first weekend it was tiring to wake up but eventually it became a habit and seeing the children’s faces and being able to make them happy gave me motivation to attend the programme. Also, I attended all the sessions and made sure that I did not miss any of them because I have a set of responsibilities that I had to fulfill. Thus, I was throughout committed to the process and to the service. 

LO5: Demonstrate the skills and recognize the benefits of working collaboratively:

Talking about cooperation, it was with both my fellow classmates and the children. Me, as a person, lack in working collaboratively because I am a person who likes things my way, but this time I would say it was much easier to work together because the community service was not about being the best, it was about having fun together. In community service, dance in particular we had more than 50+ children to teach and working with was a bit challenging because handling a big crowd could be a mess but with collectively deciding positions and places to stand while teaching made it simple as ABC. Initially we had fights among us but with common ground we made sure we did not fight much. Not just but deciding roles and responsibilities also made it easier. Coming to the children, they were very understanding and respectful towards each one of us so it was a big task to coordinate with them because they listened to us and were much more excited than us to learn and acquire new skills. 

LO6: Demonstrate engagement with issues of global significance

I identified that lack of education and lack of opportunities for the people who are below the poverty line. I consider that education is the best medium to gain knowledge and explore your strengths but these children did not have opportunities to learn and got to a proper school. Due to this programme we are providing the children with opportunities to explore their interests in different aspects/ feilds.

LO7: Recognize and consider the ethics of choices and actions:

We all as a team of team the community service made sure that we are treating the kids repectfully considering that many people do treat people below pverty line badly, thus, I individuallly made sure that I make them feel one of us and not treat them like untouchables. I also made sure that they feel comfortable with us and in they don’t feel as if I was and authority I made sure that I treat the children same as my friends.

Learner profiles demonstrated were: Caring and Communicator. Caring because through the programme I made sure that the kids are feeling good or made sure that they are not feeling shy, also at times I could see that few of the students were not able to understand a few steps properly, I made sure that they understood the dance step and made them feel at home. Communicator because it was evident that throughout the programme a lot of communication was needed because we were supposed to teach and while communicating I made sure that I had a calm tone and answered them politely. 

Takeaways: 

Community service taught me that we should always make sure to give back to the community because in some other way we are helping each other. For example, one of the children was a daughter of our school’s support staff, who cleans the school for us everyday in the morning before the school starts. Not only this but, these people were filled with talent and seeing them engrossed so much in the dance that it made me feel that these students have so much passion for something that they enjoy. Moreover, when they got a chance to perform on stage they all got so excited and elevated it taught me that there are so many things that we privileged people are not grateful for despite having so much and them having minimal things and are still grateful for.