Rural immersion was a CAS trip of 6 days to the village ‘Lachhakadi’ in Gujarat. This trip was about adapting to the rural lifestyle, providing service in possible forms, gaining knowledge related to the environment and knowing the daily routine and the struggle faced by the people living in the village.  Earlier I thought that a trip to the village would be boring but it wasn’t. It was much better than I thought. We painted school walls, performed skits, went for a trek, helped in a bamboo, turmeric and mango farm, and worked in a pickle unit. This trip provided me with the opportunity to explore my strengths and weaknesses.

LO2 – Demonstrate that challenges have been undertaken, developing new skills.

I love being a part of adventurous activities but never got a chance to do any. Although I do have Acrophobia which holds me back from doing activities. This trip gave me a chance to overcome Acrophobia and enjoyed the fun of rappelling and rock climbing. At that moment, when we were about to start the rappelling I was very scared because I’d never done any such activity which involved height because of my fear, but the mentor with me kept motivating me to do it and only enjoy the adventure. As I started, stepping behind I was getting anxious but was also excited for the adventure because deep inside I knew that it was all safe and I was going to enjoy it if I patiently did it. When I was going towards the edge I thought of quitting it after seeing the height of the cliff but still tried to overcome my fear and tried to do it.

LO3 – Initiate and plan a CAS experience

We came up with and organized a skit experience for this CAS trip. On our last day, we presented a skit that we had prepared for the local school children in Lachhkadi. This fell under the creative strand as organizing a skit needed to come up with original ideas to make things fun, lighten the mood, deliver the lesson, and let the students know what it’s like to be a student in both urban and rural settings.

LO4 – Show perseverance and commitment in CAS experience 

Being a part of this trip, I showed my commitment to each activity. Committing myself to the challenges that I’ve never faced in my life made me realize that I can give my best throughout the trip in activities, overcome my fears and improve my skills. Giving my best in farming, painting in school, in the bamboo furniture unit, in turmeric and mango farm, and also in the processing unit of pickle made me feel astonished as I got an opportunity to come out of my comfort zone, experience such activities and to live a simple life like people living in a village for few days without any gadgets. 

LO5 – Demonstrate skills and benefits of working collaboratively 

On this trip, we were divided into groups for many tasks like farming in turmeric and mango farms, and in bamboo furniture units as well. There we had to work together effectively to complete the task on time. We were also divided into 2 groups and were asked to prepare a skit for students of the school located near our stay. We collaboratively shared our ideas, and opinions and worked on the topic which we were going to present in front of the students. We planned a skit by mutually deciding the topic which was ‘rural v/s urban’. I was assigned the role of a narrator and my job was to keep the children updated about what was happening in the skit. Collaboratively we worked together as a team, and assigned roles to each of the members as we only had 2 days to plan a skit and present it.  

LO6 – engagement with issues of global significance 

On this trip, we interacted with the people of the village in almost most of the places we visited. We met the ‘Sarpanch’ of the village and talked about the livelihood of the people here, sources of income and agriculture and how it helps in increasing the income. The problem we identified was that the people in the villages didn’t have a proper facility to live, didn’t have clean filtered water to drink, don’t have many resources to make the work easy, despite all these issues they were still happy in their own lives but having facilities, luxury, a safe place to live, lots of resources we are still not happy from what we have. Most of the villagers there do farming and earn money and that’s the only main source of income for them, but working hard all day long they still don’t get the opportunity they deserve. But gradually, we’ve also seen that these problems are getting solved and the people in rural areas are trying to change the mindset which holds them back from being open-minded. 

LO7 – Recognize and consider the ethics of choices and actions 

Living in a rural setup, being a helping hand in turmeric and mango farms, and observing the hard work done by the farmers gave me a reality check that we should never forget that gratitude towards the farmers who provide us food by working hard all day. Our choices of being there mentally and physically with villagers, helping them, and listening to their daily routines left an impact on the people we interacted with throughout this trip because our choices and actions were unpredictable for them.