I volunteered for the Seva Cafe to help make and serve food for guests at a literary event in our school, “Monsoon Musings”. The goal of the Seva Cafe was to raise donations, which were given to organisations for missing girls and anti-rabies vaccination of dogs in our city. This experience was enjoyable for me as I was able to spend time with my friends while also helping in taking action for important causes. I worked together with my group to make food and also helped in setting up for the event, during which I achieved the learning outcomes 2, 4, 5, 6 and 7.

We had to work in groups for this event, where each group was assigned a certain food item to make on the day of the event. Most of the times it is easy for me to work in groups because I think I am co-operative. Although this time also most of the group work was easy, there were a few problems in communication within the group and some of the group members were absent on the day of the event without prior information to the rest of the group, which made it difficult for us as everyone had to bring specific ingredients. Other than the small communication problems, there were no other problems and my teammates and I worked well together to overcome that problem too. I think it is important to be able to work collaboratively with others because it helps develop our social skills as well as makes it easier for all the people involved as the work would be finished more smoothly rather than if everyone was not able to work together. Working as a team helped us in this experience as we all divided our duties and everyone was cooperative most of the time, which I think helped us finish our work faster and we were able to make the food last minute because everyone was working.

On the day of the event, we did not know that we had to come with the ingredients ready (like vegetables chopped) so we had to work very fast as we had limited time available and had to start making and serving the food and also help in setting up the venue for the event (for Seva Cafe). It was a challenge for me because I usually work too slowly so I had some difficulty working quickly. Moreover, I could not cut vegetables that well so I took some more time than was required in cutting them, but in the end my group members and I worked together and divided our tasks and finished our work before time and were able to help set up for the event as well. I believe it is important to take up any challenges because it helps us gain new experiences and skills which can help us with other problems that we may face further in our lives.

For this experience, we had to come to school on a Saturday and had to bring the ingredients with us, and not skip the event completely. In my opinion, I can commit to things such as activities for relatively short time spans, but find it difficult to continue with them for a very long time, because I usually lose interest in them after some time. I think that commitment and perseverance are important because we need them to complete our tasks and to maintain our lifestyle as well as to be successful in our daily life, like being committed to our work or school projects.

The issues that this activity catered to were missing girls and anti-rabies vaccination for dogs. The issue of missing girls is globally significant because there are so many girls around the world that go missing and are victims of human trafficking or other illegal activities. Anti-rabies vaccination for dogs is very significant in my city locally if not that much globally, because there are many stray dogs in our city and it is important for the dogs’ health as well as for the whole population of the city to be able to prevent the spread of this virus. It is satisfying for me to be able to take some action against these serious issues, even if it is in a small way by helping in raising some donations, and it is also ethical to take action against global issues and to serve others.

This was a very good experience for me because I was able to work in collaboration with many of my classmates, which helped me improve my cooperation and communication skills as I had to talk to many people I usually didn’t talk to. It also helped me see how last-minute problems can be solved as I observed everyone around me handling such situations and also had to make some changes in the original plans at the last moment. Learning these skills will help me in the last moment situations in the future and to be able to make social interactions in my daily life too. Serving the food, getting good feedback, raising a good amount of donation money and the success of the event overall was very satisfying to me and helped me develop my interpersonal skills.