For my CAS project, I was part of the organizing team of the Alumni connect session hosted by our school. The role that I was assigned for this event was event coordinator where I had to lead the team to manage different roles. The event gave students an opportunity to interact with alums who have graduated to different parts of the world and into different colleges and universities. The students got to interact with them and understand the do’s and don’ts they will also face when applying for universities in the coming years. The process for organizing the event helped me gain a lot of learning experiences and outcomes like inviting the alums, promoting the event on social media and within the school, rolling out interest forms to manage the logistics and many more, dividing roles within the team and managing the tasks. 

LO1- Identify own strengths and develop areas for growth

With the help of the planning process, I was able to identify my strengths and weaknesses in regards to event planning. The strengths that I had in regards to the event was creativity and teamwork. These strengths helped me to manage my weakness which was time management. However, with the help of this strength, I was able to manage my time effectively. It is important for one to know their strengths and weakness as it can help them balance out the strengths and weakness to find an effective solution like in my case, teamwork along with creativity helped me to manage my time effectively as time management was one of my weaknesses along with the time constraint that we faced due to the last minute alums that confirmed their response to the event. 

LO3- Demonstrate how to initiate and plan a CAS experience

The Alumni Connect event had a lot of factors to cater to and managing all the different aspects was a challenge that we faced. The time we had to manage the event was a constraint because of the tasks we had. We had to contact the alums from our school to ask them if they would like to be a part of the event where they would have to interact with the students who are interested in the same field that they are majoring/working in, if the alums would be available on the day, if they would be able to come to school, if the are residing in another country then would they be willing to join an online conference, etc. With this, the little time we had was a constraint, therefore, dividing the tasks and alloting tasks to week and date was a method we used to  divide our tasks and time. This helped to to plan the event which was a part of my CAS project. We needed to identify the purpose of the session. Is it to showcase existing CAS opportunities? How it helped us brainstorm new ideas?, and how to connect with alums. Reaching out to alumni requires research to identify suitable candidates and crafting engaging outreach messages. 

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

Working as a part of a team is easy for me. While working for the alumni connect session, being part of the team really helped us to figure out the logistics, creativity, promotion, and execution of the event. The entire session was hinged on the team working together effectively. From brainstorming ideas to delegating tasks and ensuring smooth execution. Clear communication is essential within the planning team, with alumni, and with the rest of the team which was done with the help of active listening, expressing ideas effectively, and resolving any differences constructively, all while managing the time given to us to work on the event, finalize everything and execute every part of the event under a minimal budget.

Takeaways:

With the help of this activity, others were also benefited as with the help of the alumni connect session, students and their parents were able to interact with the alums regarding their applications, process of applications, and the requirements it takes for that. Along with all this, they were also able to understand the field of interest, the alumnus’ personal experience in their major/field and how they overcome their challenges to help the students avoid making the same mistakes that they did. 

This event planning was successful as the aim; which was to help the students and their parents reach out to the alums which was possible when we invited the alums to school and some through video conferences as well.