Community Service is a platform that is held in our school every year in which students are given the opportunity to volunteer to teach underprivileged students coming from nearby villages something they didn’t know or weren’t available off. So, I participated in the art and craft sector in community service where we taught underprivileged children every weekend for 6 weeks. The Learning Outcomes of this CAS experience were LO-1, LO- 2, LO- 4, LO-5, LO-6

Learning outcome 1 – Identify own strength and develop areas of growth 

knowing your own strengths and weaknesses gives you a better understanding of yourself and how you function. Understanding your strengths keeps you ahead in a lot of things whereas knowing your weaknesses gives you a clearer understanding of things that may be holding you back and you should workaround. During this service, I found the weaknesses that were pulling me back such as I wasn’t good at communicating with new people in this case which were children and I lacked skills in the art and craft sector due to which I wasn’t as good as the other volunteers. Whereas the strengths that I discovered were that I am a great and fast learner. Every weekend, while teaching those children, I was learning with them. Being aware of my weaknesses and strengths now makes me feel more confident as now I know the things I have to work upon to get better. But if those weaknesses were solved before then I would have benefited such as, being more confident and communicative to new people might have helped the children to learn more. 

Learning outcome 2 – Demonstrate that challenges have been undertaken, developing new skills in the process

At starting, coming early to teach children every weekend something in the art and craft sector in which I lacked skills and interacting with them was a challenge. Further, with all the new academic learning and my tough subject, keeping a balance and not missing any sessions was also difficult at first. Not being involved before in any such activity was a greater drawback for me which made this Cas experience more challenging for me. Also at the beginning of the sessions, teaching those students to make something, where everyone has different pace with different capabilities and finishing every weekend task in a certain period was tough. But as the sessions progressed, I started to have fun and enjoyed teaching those students and myself sometimes also. At the end of the sessions, I also realized that taking out time for the children was a great step and didn’t hamper my routine or studying time that much and therefore I would be happy to be involved or be a part of any such activity/events. To overcome my challenges in between the whole 6-weekend span, after knowing that I wasn’t that open to communicating with new children, I always try to push myself to talk to them in their language and don’t feel shy. Further, I also now after the sessions, participated in many events like MUN’s or other school events which required continuous involvement of communicating skills. 

Learning outcome 4 – Show commitment and determination

The two qualities, commitment, and perseverance are essential for a person which makes them sustain their pursuit of success. Commitment helps to produce the focus whereas perseverance after that helps to make it over the rough spots along the journey to success.

Talking about me, getting committed to some event or activity when I enjoy doing the activity is easy. And when the events are service-based which are beneficial to many people/children and at the same time make me happy, I can do it all day long without getting bored. For this activity, coming early to teach the children every weekend was also a huge commitment for me to make because I had to devote my working hours to teach the underprivileged children. The commitment of not missing any sessions and making them learn something useful every weekend was hard but with my determination, I was somewhat successful. At the start, the service sessions and the continuous commitment to it made me feel exhausted and irritated due to which I was on the edge of missing sessions but as the sessions progressed and I started to have fun, I gave my best to teach the children. 

Learning outcome 5 – Demonstrate the skills and recognize the benefits of working collaboratively

Generally, working with others isn’t difficult for me because I believe that I try to fit in with the other people in the group I am allocated to. So, while the community sessions, working in a certain assigned group wasn’t a big challenge for me and I didn’t encounter any difficulties with other volunteers too. Rather, working collaboratively with other younger or same age volunteers helped me to learn more in the art and craft sector as I wasn’t that good at it. It helped me learn new ideas and ways to create masks and cards using cardboard, paper dish, wool, icecream sticks, etc. During the sessions, teamwork was key to complete the task on time and efficiently as each volunteer was allocated only 2 children. Having more volunteers was also found to be beneficial for both children and volunteers as it helped the ones with low creativity skills like me. 

Learning outcome 6 – Demonstrate engagement with issues of global significance

This service raises an important issue that has a global significance according to me. The issue is a lack of education and this issue is faced by many families and people around the country and world. This issue is globally important as worldwide, due to poverty, lack of jobs, and low income, children are not able to get quality education like we do which hampers their personal and overall countries future. We have been known to this issue from the start but as we aren’t affected, we don’t really understand the impact of this issue and don’t take this issue seriously which causes such issues to prolong and keep on increasing. Knowing about this global issue and the real impact of this on the low-income families, as a person it makes me feel very bad and makes me feel as if I should do some time for it and contribute to the act to decrease it. For this, my sister and I along with some of her friends started to go to rural areas to teach small children but nowadays due to some other important things in life, the visiting has decreased.