For this activity, I prepared 100 dinner meals for poor people in Bardoli who lost their homes in the August 2019 rain flood. These people live in the Mindhola river bridge’s slum areas. After I prepared the meals, I went to the slum areas and distributed the food to the poor people.
CAS strands that are covered: Creativity (food creation from ideas), Activity (carrying food containers and cutting vegetables ), and Service (serving food to the people in need).
Date: 6 August 2019.
My participation description: the purpose of this activity was to understand the people’s problems from slum areas suffer (in terms of food) due to natural calamities. From this understanding, I was able not only recognize the challenges that these poor people face but also help them to solve those problems. Additionally, this activity built strong empathy in me using which I catered to the interest in helping people in need.
Learning outcomes that I catered:
LO1: Identify own strengths and develop areas for growth (I was able to identify my strengths and weaknesses through this activity. My strength was that I was able to handle many types of equipment in the kitchen despite me not working in a kitchen often. My weakness was that I was not fast enough to create 100 meals by myself. Therefore, I took help from a school to borrow a few people to aid me in cooking the 100 meals. It was important to know my strength and weakness because through that identification, I was able to ask for help where my above-mentioned weakness resisted me to prepare the meals and due to my above-mentioned strength, I was able to maintain it to quicken the working process).
LO2: Demonstrate that challenges have been undertaken, developing new skills in the process (the challenging part of this activity was to handle my weakness of quickening the meal-preparing process. This was challenging because I had not worked in kitchens often enough to prepare meals at a fast pace. I overcame this challenge by asking for help from professional cooks from Vibrant School of Excellence. By undertaking this challenge, I felt overwhelmed from the manner in which, the poor people had to face hunger issues. It was important to undertake this challenge as due to it, I was able to understand the unfortunate condition of some people caused naturally. This understanding was further put into use by helping those people.).
LO3: Demonstrate how to initiate and plan a CAS experience (for this activity, I organized myself by having my meal-preparing work divided for four people to quickly prepare the meals. I am usually an organized person. Yet, initiating was difficult because preparing 100 meals in a short period of time actually much more difficult than on paper. Planning and initiating in the future will be much easier than my latest experience because I have gained experience for it. Planning and initiating are the only two components of doing which is why it is important to know how to do it).
LO4: Show commitment to and perseverance in CAS experiences (the long time that was required to complete 100 meals made this activity to require commitment and perseverance. The commitment required to do this activity was to partake in every process of the activity which are preparing meals, carrying those meals in multiple containers, and then distributing those meals to really quicken the whole activity. It is generally easy for me to commit and show perseverance to activities due to my persistent nature. It is important to show commitment and perseverance in everything because these qualities increase the success rate of your work exponentially).
LO5: Demonstrate the skills and recognize the benefits of working collaboratively (working with others is difficult as generally, the people who I work with are strangers. During this activity, it was not difficult for me to work with my team members because I personally knew my team members. I was able to work collaboratively with my team members because I knew that it makes the work process much easier and quicker compared to working individually).
LO6: Demonstrate engagement with issues of global significance (The primary issue was the shortage of food that occurred as the people in the slums lost their homes and the storage areas in them. This is a global issue as many parts of the world face it such as famine in parts of Africa. As I got to know about this issue, I felt a need to contribute to the solving of this problem, hence I ended up doing this activity).
LO7: Recognize and consider the ethics of choices and actions (the ethical issues were indirectly connected to money. In this case, the food and packaging materials required money; therefore, misbehaving with the act of following the gym time table would mean a waste of money. In this manner, indirectly, this ethical issue positively affected me because I mentally reminded myself to do my work ethically. My opinion on this issue before this activity was that it had to be avoided entirely to avoid money wastage, and this opinion did not change even after the action was completed).
Final takeaway:
Learner profile attributes that I developed as a result of this CAS experience: 1. Caring as I cared for the people who lost their homes in the recent flood by providing prepared meals as they faced a shortage of food.
2. Communicators as I communicated for additional help to prepare 100 meals and gather information about the slum areas in terms of the population.
This activity directly benefited the people who lost their homes in the flood as I provided food to them which they required. And eventually, it emotionally benefited me as I got very happy from helping those poor people. My perspective of not entering slum areas for health and safety reason changed as I understood the pain of these people which forced me to enter the slum areas to distribute the 100 meals. From this activity, I learned that helping others is not only beneficial for others but also for you. I would change the duration of this activity as I wanted to prepare more meals which required an extra day. This lesson will be applied everywhere because there will always be people in need of help and doing so will help me to contribute to society.
Photographic evidence:
