August 5th to August 20th

Community service is an event, which is organized by the fountainhead school for the SMC students. It was an event from 5th August to 20th August. Community service includes different types of activities such as ICT, dance, football, frisbee, arts and craft,and etc. Every student needs to choose one activity and learn new things related to that activity for the upcoming 6 days. As volunteers, we were also asked to choose one of the activities from them and help them to learn new things. For this event, I chose dance as an activity and my goal was to help them learn new skills and to help them make new friends. My purpose was to know them more and express their inner self towards us.

As there were many volunteers for the dance, we divided ourselves in different areas. For example, 4 to 5 volunteers were assisted to stay near the front stage while others needed to separate themselves in different places so it would be easy for the kids to learn the dance by seeing us. First day of our community service was a little hectic as they were meeting us for the first time. At first, it was hard to learn new steps. We were not able to understand the way they wanted to learn and which type of dance they loved to do. Even though it was hard, we were able to help them learn half of the steps. From the first day, our goal was not only to teach them new steps but also to consider their health. And for that, in every session, we kept a warm up session with music for up to 10 minutes which keeps them energetic and also prevents them from feeling sleepy. 

Even though they were able to learn the steps more quickly, we still faced issues because there were some steps that we thought that they would be able to learn but, as per the majority of people being of small age group, we needed to change our steps right at the moment which caused some difficulties on the first day. After understanding them, it was easy to help them learn and help them practice. Each session, we were able to know something new about each other and at last, we were finally able to achieve our goal. We were also able to make a bond between each other. Not as teachers and students but as friends.

LO 4 : “Show commitment and perseverance in CAS experience”

Coming for community service early in the morning at school was a bit difficult on weekends. Especially on Sundays as we, as students, don’t have a habit of waking up early to reach school at 8:30. But, for me the courage and determination of the students to learn dance, motivated me to reach every 3 weekends on time. First 2 days were a little bit hard for me to adjust to the sleeping cycle but, after attending the first 2 days, the happiness they get after learning new steps was the reason I was able to attend all of the sessions on the weekends.

LO 5 : “demonstrate skills and benefits of working collaboratively”

As per me, working in a group is a little bit hard because the way I expect the group members to behave or collaborate, sometimes doesn’t happen at all. But, in these 3 weekends, the courage of FS volunteers to teach them new skills made it easy for me to collaborate with them. Working in a group was the only reason we were able to achieve our goals. To give every student equal attention, we divided ourselves into 3 groups where the head of the FS volunteers team were on the stage, 5 to 4 volunteers were near the front stage and others were equally divided behind so it would be easy for them to learn new steps. We also divided ourselves to teach every student new steps with perfection. For the first few days, collaborating with each other was tough as we were left to divide ourselves in different parts which took a lot of time in the first session. But, as days began to pass, we were able to coordinate with each other properly which made our work easier.

LO 7 : “Recognize and consider the ethics of choices and actions”

This community service made me realize that I have access to all of the things which I want or need and spending time with these unprivileged childrens made me realize that even though we all are privileged enough, we are not satisfied with our lives. On the other hand, they don’t even get a quality education like us, they are still happy with their lives. I think this community service was helpful to me and them also. This CAS experience not only helped me to achieve my goals but also helped me to learn that spending time with your loved ones or working on your likes is the only thing which gives you happiness.