American traditions and dances have always fascinated me. And likewise, I have seen other cultures conducting Indian cultural dances like Garba, bhangra etc. It occured to me that we could experience the American culture in school as well. So, that’s when we decided to organise MORP. It is a casual dance, where people didn’t require a date, or a nice dress. It is a place when we can be ourselves and have fun. In addition to that, we thought of raising funds through the event, which were used to courier various things we collected from people. We were seeing people suffer constantly due to the Kerala floods. So, we thought of going to each and every house at our society and asking them to give us their old clothes, utensils and other donatable items. The things collected were properly segregated and packed into boxes, which were later donated to Goonj, Mumbai and few other charity organisations in Surat. These charitable organisations helped the needy ones. So, we thought of this different idea, to contribute for a good cause. I was organising this event with my 5 other friends. My role was to convince students to attend the event and side by side try people to sponsor our event.
Learning Outcome achieved:
LO1:Identify own strengths and develop areas for growth:
I am good at persuading people, which made it easy for me get more sponsors and bring guests to the event. It was my plus point and that is why I was assigned that task. My weakness would be procrastinating. I had to run here and there for last minute errands that I was supposed to complete before. The stress caused by these errands made me realise the importance of doing work beforehand.
LO3: Demonstrate how to initiate and plan a CAS experience:
We had to organise this event from the scratch, which was a hectic task. I had to complete tasks on deadlines set by the entire team. Although I procrastinated a little, I managed to complete my work on time. I am not usually an organised person but with the help of others this event ran smoothly. To make my work easier, I had even made a spreadsheet where I would have kept track of my work and done and regularly check my progress.
LO4: Show commitment to and perseverance in CAS experiences :
We all had made commitments to make this event a success and I was dedicated towards it. Everytime, I felt that my moral was becoming less, I used to remind myself about the good cause. This made me feel energised and motivated. It kept me going on and made me strive for a successful event.
Lo5: Demonstrate the skills and recognize the benefits of working collaboratively:
Working in a team was like a roller coaster, we had our ups and downs, but in the end, we all came together. Our workload was divided and everyone was very cooperative throughout the event. We did have a few arguments over a few decisions which were solved with discussions. We didn’t exactly have a leader in our group, we all were considered equal which made things run smoothly.
LO7: Recognize and consider the ethics of choices and actions:
While separating items, there were a lot of damaged, unhygienic clothes which were not meant to be sent. That is the main reason why we thought of segregating it. So, we had to make decisions about each and every item individually, making sure it was okay to sent it. We even received a few new t-shirts with their price tags on.
Overall, this fundraising event made me learn many different skills. Along this process, I developed management, marketing, time management, creativity skills. Our expectations were lowered down a lot of times, when we weren’t getting a good number of audience response. But with great efforts, we tried to make it a successful event. This event turned out to be one of the best events I have organised and I am glad, I have a supportive team too. The enthusiasm we had for the completion of the event and successfully donating the items was amazing. It was a great experience.
Images for items received for donation:
Pictures of the event-
Time-lapse of segregating clothes:
https://youtu.be/H7eLt9_hyJI
https://youtu.be/HqnY3neXtsU