Karma Kitchen was an event that aimed to serve delicious food and provide entertainment to the school’s support staff. The whole idea of the event was to serve people who serve students and teachers unconditionally on a daily basis, for us it was just another way of saying “Thank you”. I was a volunteer at the event and I contributed to the event by doing tasks like photographing and covering the event, cleaning the dishes and cutting vegetables. 

LO1: Identify own strengths and develop areas for growth

As I started photographing for these events, I started realising that I am actually good at photography. I also realised I have a good sense of angles, frames and subjects. It was really nice to see that everyone loved the pictures and a few of them even posted it on their social media accounts. 

LO2: Demonstrate that challenges have been undertaken, developing new skills in the process

There were various venues for the event and I had the responsibility to photograph everyone. The venues were kitchen, the dining area and the assembly, each of them had different lighting conditions. I was not very familiar with these settings earlier but during the event, I got to experiment with the different settings which also helped learn more about shutter speeds and ISO. Cutting vegetables was another challenge for me. At first, I was very bad at cutting and I chopped uneven slices but as time passed with the help of my peers I was able to get even chopping at a quicker rate. 

LO4: Show commitment to and perseverance in CAS experiences

Working all the time was a very difficult job, sometimes I was helping my friends in the kitchen and other times I was busy photographing people. I was surely very tired and it seemed like my legs were begging me to sit, but If I would have done that then my work quality would be compromised and my work would be incomplete. Leaving the job undone was something that I never liked, so sitting and resting was not an option for me. 

LO5: 

I realised that working collaboratively also helps us develop new skills. As I mentioned earlier, I was not very good at chopping the vegetables, I made terrible slices at much slower rates. I was lucky to have friends near me who were familiar with those particular skills, they helped me learn the particular technique needed to cut different vegetables. It definitely helped me a lot to improve my chopping. 

Overall, I really enjoyed the event and had a great time. I definitely enjoyed the time with friends but I also enjoyed serving all the didis and bhaiyas. It was a really nice feeling to see a big smile on their faces.