Global Odyssey was an event organized by grade 11 students on 5th Feb 2020. It was expected that the students apply their knowledge of Group 3 subjects (Economics and Business Management) into the organization of the fair which was divided into 3 parts: Food, Games, and Fashion. Along with volunteers being divided into three groups, there were also a bunch of students who were then in the management group. The group included 4 event coordinators, resource managers, and a decoration head. I was one of the event coordinators and my responsibility was to manage the whole food segment of the fair. The management included finalizing the food dishes, pricing strategies, marketing plan, and managing all the volunteers who were in the food team. I had two food team leaders along with 19 students. I achieved LO1, LO2, LO3, LO5, LO6, LO7.
LO1: I could identify various strengths and weaknesses while organizing the event. I understood that I had the people skills when it came to dealing with all the volunteers, managing all the logistics, coordinating with school staff for permissions. I also realized that I could lead things well, make my expectations clear, and get work out of people. However, I understood that I need to work upon my anger. There were times when I was very short-tempered which caused volunteers to be scared of me or could not openly share the issues they were facing. I also realized that I need to learn to have clearer communication with my peer leaders. Lack of communication caused a lot of confusion between the organizers.
LO2: A thing that was extremely challenging to deal with was that out of 4 organizers, one of the organizers never completed her work. There were times when we had to complete her work or remind her a lot of times so that she could lead her team and get the work done. In the end, we decided to take up all her work and complete it.
LO3: Organizing an event did not seem a very difficult task for me because with planning everything was simple and decided. To make sure that we were on time, we made a backward planner where we started writing the tasks based on the dates when they were supposed to be completed. This backward planning was very useful as we knew the schedule and everyone was on the same page. Looking back, I think initiating was more difficult than planning as, during the planning time, we had various ideas however, to ensure that they are executed similarly created a lot of chaos. In the end, I think initiating and planning events in the future will be easier for me as I think I have learned a lot of lessons from this experience.
LO5: Working with others is sometimes easy and sometimes difficult for me. It is situational. Working with partners who are equally determined and persistent makes the whole experience easy and fun. However, working with partners who are half-heartedly working and show no enthusiasm makes the task difficult for me. As already mentioned, working with one of the organizers was very difficult and checked my patience extremely. It is very important to work in a team as there are more ideas developed, more strengths of all the team members make the execution easy. Overall, it was fun to collaboratively work and organize the event.
LO6: The profits raised in the event were donated to an NGO called “Friends with tails” who work for stray dogs, provides them with shelter and food. This catered to the issue of “life on land” from the list of issues of global significance. We decided to choose this issue because we felt that it was catered less by normal citizens. People donate to the poor or for the conservation of environment, however, a shelter for stray dogs was very uncommon, and hence, as a team, we decided to donate money to NGOs who do not have enough recognition.
LO7: There were many ethical issues involved in this activity. We ensured that our prices were not too high and just above our cost. We ensured that we did not use single-use plastics and rather ask all the visitors to bring their own tiffins or use steel utensils. We also ensured that the products/services were sold at the same price for all the visitors, with no discrimination age-wise.
To conclude, this CAS experience was very fun and informative. I learned so many new things about myself and others. I have become more confident in organizing events and hope to organize more such events and learn so much more.n so much more.
The posters:
The presentation for pitching:
