Bal Mela is a social event taking place at Fountainhead. Around 3000 kids from the local underprivileged schools gather at FS and take part in various fun activities and magic, puppet shows. This event takes place to share the joy that we as privileged kids have with the kids from lower socio-economic backgrounds. They are invited every year to come and take part in activities such as clay modeling, mask making, nail art, etc. I have been taking part in Bal Mela for the past 5 years and it gives me immense pleasure in seeing the kids smile. 

LO5: Students are taken through different venues one by one and each school is assigned a volunteer/teacher from Fountainhead to escort them. I was assigned to handle the activity of Airplane Toss along with one support staff. Both of us delegated responsibility, one of us taught the children to make the airplanes whereas the other one held the target where the airplane was supposed to pass through. The children after making their airplanes came to me to start playing. I recorded the names of each of those who were successful in hitting the target and sent them to the didi (my co-partner) to collect their rewards. We needed to be very kind and gentle with the kids as they were young.

LO4: We had to arrange the resources such as the newspaper basket, making the targets from the mountboard beforehand. I am usually an organized person and hence it was not difficult for me to manage my work. This will make my work easier in the future as I now know how to deal with young kids and how to give them instructions in simple language. It is important to know how to plan activities because without planning, there will be a lot of chaos and the people taking part in the event will have no instructions to follow. It also helps us in identifying challenges that might arise in the near future, which gives us sufficient time to have our backup plan.

LO2: I discovered that I was very interactive with the students which are why they frequently kept visiting my booth. We spoke the same language so communication was easy. I barely faced any difficulties other than asking them to maintain the decorum which is usually difficult to maintain among young kids. It is important to know our weaknesses beforehand so that we can work towards making them our strengths. In this, I demonstrated LO1. However, this was a wonderful experience overall as I think I barely had any weaknesses and all the children were smiling after visiting my booth.

LO6: Children are often deprived of their basic rights to live their childhood. Poverty has led to this and this experience helped us give the kids one day where they can enjoy all these activities. We also gave them food, dealing with the global issue of lack of nutrition.