As part of my CAS service experience, I volunteered with World Wellness Network, a student-led nonprofit dedicated to making health education accessible to everyone. As a part of our outreach, we visited an all-girls orphanage where children (ages 6-16) had been abandoned due to gender bias around the rural India.
Our goal was to educate them on basic hygiene practices in an engaging and interactive manner. Through dance-based learning, paper drawing activities, and hands-on distribution of hygiene kits, we ensured that the children not only understood hygiene but also enjoyed the learning process.
LO3 – Initiate and Plan a CAS Experience
To make the session successful, we first planned on gathering the necessary funds for the outreach by conducting a dance workshop around 1-2 weeks prior of our outreach, lead by Misha Lilwani – the founder of WWN, who possess a keen interest in dance. The proceeds from this event helped us purchase essential hygiene kits, including toothbrushes, toothpaste, and soap bars hence ensuring the kids had access to hygiene products.
Prior to the day of the outreach, i took along printouts with me, which when handed out to the girls, they filled in details like their name and what activity do they enjoy to do the most. This allowed us to create a bridge of communication with them since all of them were hesitant at first.
Effective planning was crucial as to manage time, arrange the resource and structuring activities in a way that the children engage.
LO5 – Demonstrate Skills and Benefits of Working Collaboratively
Collaboration played a key role in the success of this experience. We ensured that the leading responsibilities were distributed effectively amongst us volunteers,one took the dance session while others focused on arranging the resources required and leading interactive activities. Inspite of being responsible for individual leading roles, all of us participated and engaged in all the activities that we conducted for the kids, from dance-based learning and drawing activity to the demonstrations of how to wash your hands in the most effective manner possible.
By sharing tasks and communicating effectively from the very beginning, we could conduct a productive session which contributed and reinforced the importance of teamwork in us in order to make a strong impact.
LO6 – Engagement with Issues of Global Significance
In this session, we primarily addressed lack of access to hygiene education, but we also unexpectedly reflected on gender inequality and biases after learning about the children’s family backgrounds.
Initially, we focused on promoting hygiene awareness, but as we spoke to the girls and learned their stories, we realized the deeper social injustices they had faced simply for being born female.
The moment that truly stayed with me was when, despite their circumstances, the girls responded with a smile on their faces when asked about their families.
Both hygiene education and gender discrimination are significant global concerns, and this experience gave us a new perspective on how deep-rooted biases impact access to education, healthcare, and opportunities for young girls. This realization reinforced the importance of not just providing resources but also advocating for a change.