Community Service at school was one time where I worked not for myself, not on myself but it still gave me immense happiness. I taught the kids who were underprivileged. I spent time with them, connected, and understood them. I tried giving a fraction of my life and a part of my day to those people and teaching them something they usually wouldn’t get an opportunity to learn. Since I have been into creative things so I chose art and craft to teach those kids. Something that I would enjoy doing and teaching. Mainly this got me 4 learning outcomes which were LO4,5,6,7 and I will be writing about those in my reflection

LO4 was showing commitment and perseverance towards a task or my CAS experience, which I did show because there were difficulties which I faced but still continued and finished my commitment. One of the biggest barriers for me was language because I don’t speak or understand Gujarati which is the local language, while the kids who came were comfortable in that language and faced problem in understanding if I spoke in Hindi. However, I tried to take help from my friends who knew that language in order to communicate, I also repeated myself three to four times to explain something they couldn’t really gain clarity in. Another commitment to this activity was giving 3-4 hours of our weekend where we usually plan on working with extra academics or being with our family. However, I knew this wasn’t going to last for a year, I knew it was just 3-4 weeks we had to give and that is also how I showed my commitment. The reason for this was that it is easy for me to commit to things I enjoy doing or genuinely want to do and so. I believe being committed to something is important because unless you do so, you’d be switching from one thing to the other and won’t be able to succeed or accomplish anything fully.

LO5 is mainly the benefit of working collaboratively and this activity had to be done in teams. So the kids were divided into groups and the volunteers also got divided into teams and chose one or two of those groups of kids to teach. As mentioned above I talk help from my teammates for language and communication while I helped my team with ideas for art and craft. We also worked with those young kids who constantly needed guidance and we collaboratively made their experience of learning on the weekends fun. Since I am not a very fussy or an over-particular person, it is easy for me to work in teams, delegate work, and do the rest myself. And so even during this activity, it wasn’t really tough. Especially because the teams were divided by ourselves and we were also friends who were in the same team. We understood each other and worked cooperatively. I think it is always important to know how to work with others because even in the future, one has to work in teams and can’t do everything by themselves. And so was the importance of working together in our activity, without working efficiently, we wouldn’t be able to deliver as much to the kids.

LO6 is very important here, the global significance here was how we reduced inequity between the two communities which is ours and theirs. We learned how to collaboratively work with them, understand them, and make them understand us. This is important globally because throughout our life we will encounter several different people and we have to work with them. It helps me grow because I learn how others live and be grateful for my life, it helps me widen up my view and thoughts about the different communities in the world.

Lastly, LO7 was catered because being ethical is just staying up to your moral principals. And I believe that no matter how much does one grows, being connected to your roots and giving back to the society you came from is very important. And so the skill I possess is simply being multiplied when I teach it to other underprivileged kids of my own society. It does affect me directly because it gives me a sense of gratification and pride. I had this opinion earlier but never worked on it, but doing this activity, it helped me actually bring the thought to action!