Bal mela is an event which is conducted every year by our school. The sole motto of this event is to provide a fun-filled time for underprivileged children. We invite children from government schools and have creative and lively activities planned for them such as face painting, 3-legged races, dog and the bone, and a lot more. We are giving our students this opportunity to interact with underprivileged children in order to contribute to society. Bal mela was a very fruitful and joyful event for me. I participated in this event as a volunteer and I made the children coming from government school play sports and games like Leg cricket and Tug of war.

LO5:- Demonstrate skills and benefits of working collaboratively.

Bal mela provided me a bunch of opportunities and helped me grant many learnings. Participating in Bal mela made me understand the importance of working collaboratively and the multitude of benefits it offers. Organizing and initiating such a big event in the school, and inviting hundreds of children obviously needed teamwork and determination. I and my teammates had a separate stall in which we made the children play leg cricket. In leg cricket there are 2 teams which are playing cricket but instead of a regular ball and bat, we made them play with football and their legs. Making the children play could be a hard task for any individual because the amount of children present there were many, which couldn’t certainly be possible for me to handle all alone but fortunately I was in a team hence I was not so burdened and stressed about it because being in the team helped me to manage the students playing in that area. We as a team were able to manage the children, supervised them to ensure that no one is harmed during they are playing, there is no internal fights between children and many other things. Working together increased empathy, understanding, and respect for one another’s skills and perspectives while also improving our group’s learning. This experience proved that working together can lead to greater synergy because we were able to accomplish more than we could have separately.

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

I believe that participating in a Bal Mela held at my school assisted me on my journey of claiming that ethics play an important role on choices that one makes or actions to be taken. I also got to meet a lot of people in the process, and this makes me develop an understanding of their various attitudes, teaching me to respect different cultures. Conducting and coordinating stalls like tug of war and leg cricket helped me understand responsibility and how a fair system of decision making works.

LO4:- Show perseverance and commitment in CAS experience.

To be able to wake up early to make sure that the activities will be properly managed and executed took time, patience, and commitment was a hectic job for me in Bal Mela. Sustaining and keeping a group of young children full of energy was nothing short of an exhausting job in terms of managing with a lot of patience and flexibility. That is why there are innumerable difficulties that are faced by childminders, in everyday work with children, for example how to soothe the upset children or how to solve the unforeseen problems. However, I continued to stay true to performing the tasks entrusted to me and sought innovative ways of performing them besides staying cheerful. The impact of a group, as well as requirements of getting through challenges and feeling useful were also learned by me in the event.

Learner Profiles-

• Communicator- Effective communication was needed to understand the event’s schedule and activities by having conversations with peers and the organizers successfully shared tactics and ideas to make the game more engaging and fun for the kids while collaborating with the other team members to get the kids to play leg cricket.

• Caring- The event needed the empathy and caring for the fellow students. It is demonstrated by offering assistance or encouragement during the game to the children so that they feel comfortable while playing and can enjoy to fullest. On the other hand making the underprivileged children play securely needed ensuring that everyone feels important and included so that there is no internal fights between the children and everybody gets chance to play.

To conclude, my experience at the Bal Mela demonstrated the invaluable skills and benefits that come from working together, which I learned during the whole event. It established the idea that by applying and utilizing each other’s strengths, encouraging open communication, and embracing teamwork, we can not only improve our own learning and growth, but also help to create a more vibrant and harmonious community.