I have always been interested in Garba, a traditional Gujarati dance performed during Navratri, a nine-night Hindu festival. Garba fest is a fest organized by school and volunteers for school students and the staff where everyone celebrates Navratri by doing Garba. While checking my mail one day, I found out that volunteers were needed for Garba fest’s decoration, because of my interest in Garba and will to decorate the fest in the best way possible so that the students and staff enjoy the fest, I quickly filled the form. Garba fest was on 11th of October 2024 and from around 22nd of September itself we started planning for the fest, creating crafts from paper, paper cups, threads and more for decoration, planning how everything will be decorated, and decorating the assembly one day prior to the event and on the event day for Garba fest.

Learning Outcome 2: Demonstrate that challenges have been undertaken, developing new skills in the process.
At the start, in the ending of September when all the volunteers and core members of the Garba fest team were planning on what to do, how to decorate, we initially didn’t had ideas. Our decoration team didn’t have ideas on what to decorate or how to decorate and that was a challenge for us. However then, after taking some time and with some patience, we all used our critical thinking skills and communication skills to develop solutions to answer the questions what to decorate and how to decorate together. We were able to get the idea of getting already decorated crafts and materials that the school has which the school might have used in previous events so that we could further make it more creative, make it better and use it in the Garba fest. We talked with the staff, we got our materials and started working on the same. Apart from already existing crafts, we also created new crafts that we thought would look good from already existing materials available in the school store like threads, chart papers, cardboard, paper cups and more.

Learning Outcome 4: Show commitment to and perseverance in CAS experiences.
There were many moments where I showed commitment and perseverance in this CAS experience. Firstly, I had to come early for the Garba fest planning almost every day starting from around 23rd of September to 11 October 2024 (date of Garba fest). Waking up early was hard for me because of the fact that I was staying up late to complete pending assignments and to complete academic tasks, however, regardless of this, I managed my time as best as I could, slept as early as possible and always attended the early in even though I did not want to. Furthermore, I was working on a paper cup model, joining a lot of paper cups together through sellotape in such a way that a huge circle is created made out of paper cups, this took me approximately three early ins to complete and it was a lot of hard work. I was bored and tired but didn’t stop until my work was completed. Now one day I saw my entire model which had been finished brake apart into pieces and separate paper cups. After a few minutes of thinking what just had happened, I accepted the fact that I will have to do it all again, but in a better way so that it does not brake apart again, so I showed commitment and perseverance and started creating the whole model again, but this time with glue gun so hat the paper cups and stick well together. After a few days, the model was completed and it was used in the Garba fest.

Learning Outcome 5: Demonstrate the skills and recognize the benefits of working collaboratively.
Garba fest decoration is something our team had to do together and that is why the team was formed in the first place. To decide what to decorate, how to decorate and how to go ahead for the event planning, we knew we had to work collaboratively and after working collaboratively only we were able to get the idea of what to decorate and how to decorate. We combined ideas of each other, we combined our critical thinking skills and went ahead with the decoration and creation of crafts for decoration. Additionally, in the model that I was creating of paper cup, I did took help of my friends and because of them only I was able to build it and then rebuild it after it was broken. Working collaboratively is only which gave me the motivation to rebuild a better paper cup model than before. Moreover when we started decorating the assembly around one day prior to the event and on the event day, we all worked collaboratively, dividing tasks of each while also helping each other whenever and wherever needed in the decoration which is what made the decoration successful, making the event a success. I remember I climbed a small ladder to attach some crafts on a board in the assembly and I always used to tell my friend to go and get the things that I wanted so that I would not have to keep climbing up and down the ladder, it just made everything so easy and efficient.

Conclusion –
To wrap it up, garba fest was a success, during the whole planning and decoration we all worked collaboratively, planning on how to do what to do and executing everything planned very well. Even though it was a challenging task, I showed commitment and perseverance to complete my task. This experience made me aware of my own creativity and brought my inner creativity out of me. Volunteering for the garba fest was a fun experience which allowed me to extend my own self and my own creativity while showing discipline and commitment towards the tasks assigned.