We get very limited opportunities to do something for the betterment of the people around us. Community service is something that gives me self satisfaction as well as an opportunity to connect and help the children of local communities. Community service is a platform where children from local communities come to our school and we teach them basic things like arts, sports or using a computer that is not accessible to them. I volunteered to teach them basic art and craft for 6 sessions. It was a fun learning experience for them and they really enjoyed learning how to make face masks, pen stands, cards, bookmarks, photo frames, and cardboard clouds. My goal was to share my skills and be helpful in any possible way to provide access to different resources and skills in arts and crafts.

Communication was very challenging even though I knew Gujarati could not understand certain things while we directed them on how to do something. This happened because they were not used to doing art and craft. Sparing weekends and coming for service was also a bit challenging because we had to maintain a balance between academics and CAS. I had to be really committed to my goal of providing the kids with a platform to learn something that is different for them. This helped me achieve LO 4.  Apart from this, it was very pleasant to see certain children who were very enthusiastic and also had a good amount of skills. I was very glad to see a positive response to my attempt to teach them new things. I have always been very fond of arts, therefore it makes me really happy to be able to share my knowledge, experiences, and skills with them which could help them ahead in life. I developed the attribute of being open-minded towards other people’s ideas. Quality education is an issue today. Many children do not get access to basic education due to financial differences. Community service was an attempt to overcome and spread awareness about the same, by doing this I achieved LO 6. Hence our target was to help those unprivileged children learn new art and craft skills. Knowing that I am helping cater to a globally significant issue it helps me to grow as a person and make myself feel how I responsibly contribute to overcoming such an issue on my end. I had to collaborate with other peers and groups of children hence working collaboratively was very important. This helped me cater to LO 5. There was a kid who was mentally a bit unstable and reluctant to listen to our instructions. Hence, it became very difficult to give him instructions and make him do whatever was needed. This is one of the challenges I faced during this experience. Neither was it too difficult nor was it very easy for me. 

Therefore, this CAS experience helped me respect others’ opinions and be open-minded while working with different people. Working with my peers was however very helpful because it made it easy to cater to those children with ease. These sessions were helpful for the kids who learned different skills in the process and got an exposure to art and craft. This helped me become socially aware of the issue of quality education. These sessions have made me feel very happy due to the huge amount of enthusiasm everyone had put in to get a very positive response. I would really look forward to taking initiatives in such activities whenever possible, which can be a fun learning for me as well as them.