Creative Mela is an event organised in our school for students to come and participate in creative, artistic or relaxing activities. This year, I got to take creative mela as my project, meaning I had to organize the whole function from start to finish. This event was only for grades 7, 8 and 9, and the volunteers were of grade 11. We had activities like bracelet making, dot mandala, CD art, clay work, texture art, tie and dye, macrame art, doodling, brick painting, lippan art, garba, self defence and football.

LO3 – Demonstrate how to initiate and plan a CAS experience.
Since this was my first year in school, I had little to no idea what was to be done. However, I had wonderful peers and guidance for anything I needed to know. We distributed the work among ourselves to make it easier to complete tasks on time. Despite having different opinions or ideas on any topic, we worked together to make the event come out smooth and fun-filled. Sometimes, it did feel like all the work was falling on sme of us more than others in the organising committee but we made it work by communicating and understanding the other person’s perspective.

LO5: Demonstrate skills and benefits of working collaboratively
In the start, we all worked individually and did not share our ideas much. However, we did come together in the end to put on a better and more organised show. We had secured some tasks for ourselves that had to be completed in time for the rest to complete theirs. For example, 2 of us worked together to get the volunteers and their resources for each activity while the other group made sure we had all permissions and venues. I believe the event wouldn’t have come out as perfect as it had if we hadn’t worked collaboratively.

LO7: Recognize and consider the ethics of choices and actions
We had to make sure the resources we used were sustainable and not cheap quality. This we took care of personally. We gave choices to all the volunteers and participants to make sure they weren’t uncomfortable in the activity they were part of. We knew all the activities we had would mostly make the sporty people bored, so we kept football, self-defence and Garba for them to relax in their favourite activities.

Finally, this event showed me what the benefits of working together and keeping tasks simple could bring. I made connections and learned so many ways to tackle problems that I can say this was the best learning opportunity for me. This event also helped me develop my leadership skills and how to deal with stress.