The Bal Mela is an annual event hosted at Fountainhead school wherein students from government school are invited to engage in various activities ranging from sports to dance. I have always witnessed the event take place in school and have also had the wonderful opportunity to contribute as a volunteer. My volunteering experience was a great one, I realized that I enjoyed being around children and trying to teach them something new. This year, when provided with the opportunity to be a part of the organizing committee, I signed up for it knowing that it would be a great learning experience and at the same time provide me with the opportunity to contribute to the community in a meaningful way. As one of the event coordinators, it was my responsibility to look after the arts and crafts activities alongside ensuring that the event runs smoothly.

During one of our first few brainstorming sessions, as a team we spent time dividing roles and discussing the list of activities from sports, arts and games that we want to include in the event. We had to manage around 80+ volunteers which included allocating them activities, briefing them about the event and clarifying their doubts. While the day of the event was a stressful one, it was extremely rewarding to see the children enjoy the activities and cherish their time at school. The smiles on their faces was a gift to all the hard work that went behind the event. 

LO1 – Identify own strengths and areas of growth 

I knew that ideating and planning for sports and game activities was something that I would not be great at and therefore in the first meeting itself I told my team how it would make sense for someone else from the team to take this role, while I took lead in planning arts activities. Alongside knowing that communication is one of my strong suits, I was also responsible for coordinating with the volunteers and drafting emails for approvals. Knowing each other’s strengths and weaknesses amongst the team, we were able to ensure that the roles are divided based on what everyone is an expert at and that any last minute chaos is avoided. At the same time it also ensured that all of us had fun throughout the process. Being aware of my teammates strengths, I knew who to reach out to when needed help or when certain communication was to be delivered.

LO3 – Demonstrate how to initiate and plan a CAS experience 

While I have been a part of the core committee for other such events, every event comes with its own set of challenges. For Bal Mela it was particularly about managing the volunteers, since we had 20+ activities we needed a good number of volunteers. We received a great amount of response on the form making it challenging for us to select and allocate them to activities, some volunteers dropped out 3-4 days before the event and some were requesting to join in. This made it challenging for us to manage the constant changes and keep the sheet updated with details. In order to deal with this challenge, we decided that primarily I would be the one making changes to the volunteer list to ensure that chaos is prevented and that I would also be the one sending out the communication emails.  

LO4 – Show perseverance and commitment in CAS experience 

In order to get work done for Bal Mela, it required for us to arrive early at school or skip our subject classes to have the meetings and therefore at certain times it got challenging for us to come together since each of us had a different schedule. However, since each of us has a shared goal of executing a wonderful and a memorable event for the children, despite our differences we were able to put together a wonderful show. It was particularly challenging for me to get adjusted to how everyone else worked in the team, since I had a different pace of work somewhere I expected everyone else in the team to keep up with my pace which made it particularly challenging for me to keep going with the event. At this stage is wherein I showed perseverance and commitment to continue working with my team and in the process I realized that everyone in my team had a different working pattern and that it was something that suited them the best. While it did take me some time to get used to this, it all paid well when the event was successful. 

LO5 – Demonstrate skills and benefits of working collaboratively

Bal Mela wouldn’t have been possible without the team, working collaboratively ensured that we strategically divided the roles and that everyone participated in the tasks that were assigned to them. Not just us – the team of students, it also extends to the support that we received from the school in terms of the support staff and the admin team. Coordinating with them for the requirements of the event provided me with a glimpse of how things such as transport routes and resource management work backstage. One of the benefits of working collaboratively, is that it exposes us to various ideas and solutions of problems that come our way. Since each of us in the team had a different perspective to dealing with the challenge, at the end we were able to ensure that through an amalgamation of all of our suggestions we were able to deal with the challenge effectively.