Bal mela is an event organized by our school every year, where children and students of all ages come to our school for one day. It’s an initiative dedicated to creating a memorable, joy-filled experience for children from underprivileged backgrounds. I have always liked helping others and believe in giving back to the community and providing happiness to all. So when an opportunity such as volunteering in the Bal Mela came, I instantly applied. Several activities were planned for the children coming to our school such as, “Dance, seven stones, tattoo, face painting, dodgeball etc.” My main goal in this event was to try to make it a memorable day filled with fun and happiness for the children coming over to our school. I had the experience of being in charge of the Seven Stones game.

LO1: Identify own strengths and develop areas for growth

• I identified my strength as being able to socialize with the children and communicate with them easily, it was hard at first but then I was able to mingle with them easily. A weakness however could be that it was hard to manage so many students together. We need to know about our strengths and weaknesses so that I can work on myself and develop my areas of growth. I feel that being aware of my strengths and weaknesses has helped me become more aware of myself. I would like to work on my areas of weakness if I had already worked on my weakness of managing a lot of people all at once, it would have become easier for me to undertake the whole event and make sure the flow was going smoothly. 

LO2: Demonstrate that challenges have been undertaken, developing new skills in the process

• The challenge in the Bal mela was communicating and bonding with the children present so that I could connect with them properly and make them enjoy it even more. It was challenging because I was a stranger to them and they were like strangers to me, and since I hadn’t done anything similar to this, it wasn’t easy to overcome this challenge at first glance. However, I knew how I had to overcome this challenge, I just had to be open-minded towards everyone, so I introduced myself to them and tried to connect with them by approaching each of them and addressing everyone. In the end, it worked and I discovered a new strength in me which was my communication skills. I felt really good to have undertaken this challenge since it helped me find this new skill in myself and I got to help others, which I like very much. It was important for me to undertake this challenge since I had rarely done this kind of task before and I really wanted to be part of something like this. Communication skills could be very helpful to me in the future, not only in these events but everywhere else in the real world also, like somewhere where I don’t know many people, so it would help me to socialize and mix in with everyone. Learning about having this skill in me makes me feel even more confident about myself. It’s very important to keep developing and discovering these new skills in ourselves since you never know when the skill may come into use. 

LO4: Show commitment to and perseverance in CAS experiences

• Being part of the Bal Mela required me to show commitment and perseverance since we had to stand in the hot sun the whole day and make sure that those children had a wonderful experience. I had to be committed towards it since many of the student volunteers also started leaving early and not many volunteers were left. I had to be committed to managing the children. I felt a bit burdened at first but then I quickly understood that this is a very important event for these children and for the sake of their happiness and enjoyment, I could do this for at least one day. It was easy for me to show commitment towards this activity since I understood the significance of it. It was important to show commitment and perseverance in this event since the underprivileged students get very few chances of having fun and in order to make that one day as enjoyable as it could be for them, perseverance and commitment were required.

LO6:Demonstrate engagement with issues of global significance

• All these students come from a very underprivileged background, which means that they don’t get to have access to the same kind of opportunities, education and facilities as us. That’s the main issue over here, it’s an issue of global importance because all around the world there are millions of underprivileged children like them who don’t get the opportunity to have fun or have only a fragment of happiness. Hence it was of great significance that by volunteering in this bal mela, I got to work towards this issue and it also caused personal growth inside me, because seeing all those smiling faces, brought joy inside me and inspired me to participate more in these kinds of events. Through this, it helped me become even more aware of this issue and that makes me feel that I haven’t done much service towards the community yet, that there are a lot of issues waiting to be solved and that someone needs to work for all of this. It makes me feel that I can do much more towards the community and the world. My work in the Bal Mela makes me feel that this is just the start of working towards these global and social issues for me and that I will definitely do much more. 

To conclude with my final takeaways. I developed the learner profile attributes of Caring, open-mindedness and communication through this experience. The experience brought joy to the faces of underprivileged students and it benefited them by bringing them a lot of happiness and fun. The main highlights of this experience for me were seeing how much the children enjoyed playing the game of seven stones and how happy they were. This experience really changes my views about the world and how not everyone gets to have the same kind of privileges that I get and how such small actions and events can bring so much joy and happiness to others. My learning in this activity inspires me to do more of these kinds of events and that would help the community a lot. I feel full of content that this event was a success.