CAS PROJECT-
My CAS project was conducting an event called laser tag in school. It wasn’t a school event. I chose my event to be held in school. Laser tag is a tag game played with guns which fire infrared beams. Infrared-sensitive targets are commonly worn by each player and are sometimes integrated within the arena in which the game is played. The arena consists of obstacles in which the players can hide and protect themselves to get shot by the other players. My friend and I organised this event. There were two of us who organised this event.
As the event was organised in school we had a lot of work to do. For the guns to be used in the event we called the laser tag crew from Delhi. We booked a long room in our school but we had to set up the obstacles by ourselves to make the room an arena to play. As our event was on Saturday (non-working day for the students), we had to talk to school administration to arrange a bus for the students (Our school is far for most of the students hence we had to arrange a bus for them). We had to make posters for the event. We had to advertise online. We made forms for the teams to register in our event.
We made the event a bit cheap for the students to participate hence In total we had 22 teams registered in our event, each team with 5 participants (total of 110 participants). To attract a significant number of participants we made the winning and runners up price as money (Rs.5000 to the winners and Rs.3000 to runners up). The event was seven hours long. We made each team play a minimum of 2 matches, then the top 8 teams were selected to play qualifiers, semis and then the finals. Keeping the winning prize as money, it lead the event to be like a professional one.
As we had an empty space to make it an arena. It was challenging for us, we used school’s resources as obstacles for the formation of arena. We also painted charts and obstacles to pop up the arena’s look.
As the event was all about running and shooting people to earn points. People needed a lot of stamina. Even I participated in my tournament and my team lost in the finals.
LO-1:As this was my CAS project, it needed a lot of management. I was able to manage my work efficiently by the time. Booking the bus, renting the room, arranging the food, making the tournament plan and schedule, inviting the laser tag crew from Delhi, setting up the empty room to make it an arena, stick posters around the school for the advertisement and a lot of other things. Over here I identified that even though there was a lot to manage, I was able to see myself to possess various skills and abilities which helped me to manage the event in a better way than others.
LO-2: There were a lot of new challenges faced. First one was to find sponsors for our event, at the beginning when we went to different firms asking them to sponsor us, almost all of them denied us, we were confused but never gave up. The next day we prepared ourselves well with some pointers kept in our mind to negotiate, this day eventually led us earning 4-5 sponsors for our event. Another challenge faced was when the laser gun lender denied us to lend us guns due to some other issue, hence we had to make some last minute changes where I called up a lender from Delhi, and had to arrange stuff for him, like booking his flight ticket and also had to look out for his stay in Surat.
Making a tournament schedule was also challenging but we gave our best efforts to make an efficient schedule.
LO-3: When it came to CAS projects, half of my grade were either done or planning with it. I was confused and stressed. One day, me and my friends went to play laser tag, and suddenly the idea of conducting a laser tag tournament popped up in my mind. Next day I went directly to my CAS advisor, had a talk, hence we agreed on this project. From the next week me and my partner started to make plans. We discussed all the necessary aspects and then started with our plan. As previously I have already managed with money, this time it was easier for me to manage money for the project. My previous experience did help me to organise this event in a better way for the people and us.
LO-4: I was super excited for this particular project, as this was big for me. I had continuous talks with my CAS advisor and parallely was managing stuff for the event.
LO-5: As there were two of us in the organising committee, we were able to divide our responsibilities collaboratively. We had a lot of work to do, so we decided that my partner deals with the school’s booking and I work with the arrangements which were not related to school. At times one of us needed the other partner to work collaboratively, hence we never hesitated and helped each other whenever needed.
LO-6: The event was a fundraising event, not for any school or orphanage. But it was for the street beggars and helpless people. After we totaled out our profit, we used all our money to buy clothes and some food. On the same day after buying all the facilities, we went out and gave everything to the helpless people to help and make them smile.
LO-7:We were aiming for 14 teams to get registered in our event, but gradually there were 22 teams registered, which was a good thing. But as the number of teams increased, the number of people participating in our event also increased, we did not have enough staff to manage them, only me and my partner were present at that time. So it became a bit difficult for us to manage them altogether. Also the waiting time for the teams to play laser tag match was comparatively long, hence they got bored. We tried our best to entertain them and bring everybody’s match as soon as possible.
