Garba Fest is an event that takes place every year at Fountainhead school. It is organized for all students and staff including all the teachers, didis and bhaiyas (helpers). The event took place on 13th and 14th October 2023, after the school timings. Garba fest is an amazing opportunity for all of us to come together and celebrate our culture. Everyone taking part in the event wore Indian traditional clothes such as kurta-pajama and chaniyacholi. The itinerary for the event was change of clothes and getting ready after school ended from 3:30 PM to 4:30 PM, then play a round of Garba for almost an hour, have a snack break where student volunteers had set up food stalls, next play garba for half an hour, and lastly DJ for again half an hour. The event ended at 6:00 PM. Then students boarded the buses.

We began preparing a month before the event and had several meetings with our mentor Tabassum ma’am every week. We were 2 boys and 4 girls in the team. The girls were taking care of the decoration, and the other boy and I were taking care of the logistics and management, including the bus routes, sound system, etc. We were in charge of almost everything other than deciding the decorations, although we did help to decorate the venue at the time of the event. The whole team helped in deciding the menu for food stalls and setting up the band systems where we ordered custom-printed bands for the students as entry passes.

Learning Outcome 1 → Identify own strengths and develop areas for growth
Learning Outcome 5 → Demonstrate the skills and recognize the benefits of working collaboratively
Learning Outcome 3 → Demonstrate how to initiate and plan a CAS experience

As a team, we all identified our strengths first and divided our roles accordingly. The ones who were creative got the responsibility for decorations and I got logistics as I was good at it and was able to manage it. Even though the roles were distributed amongst the team, we kept learning from each other and I developed creativity myself as I was able to think of several ideas for decoration that were aesthetically appealing during the time of the event. And the other people in decorations also helped with the logistics such as communicating with the school faculty, deciding on the food stalls, etc. We all knew each other very well as we belonged to similar backgrounds, we cracked jokes, talked a lot, and had a lot of fun whilst working. It was all about working together as a team and progressing together as it was the most efficient way to organize the event successfully.

Learning Outcome 2 → Demonstrate that challenges have been undertaken, developing new skills in the process

We faced many challenges during organizing the event. Firstly, we took a lot of time deciding on the entry passes, we discussed about passes given in the past garba fests, online designs, and the process of how we’ll distribute them to all students and teachers. We worked our way through communication with our team and mentor and finally decided in the last week and gave custom bands printing order. This was important because the school rules were strict about entries of students without registration.

Other than that, one challenge we faced was last-minute decorations, a lot of work was pending and we had to quicken our paces. The school event staff helped with the main decorations and resources, but drawing, cutting, and painting were our work. We also had to maintain the decorations for two whole days as MYP students had the event on the first day and DP students had it on the second day. Throughout the process, we developed new skills and learned time management as we were able to plan and execute ideas faster eventually.