Kahaani: The Show

Kahaani this year was arranged slightly differently than last year, as the theme was related to “A day in the life of a student at Voice for World”. This meant that the various dances were all more closely tied to the service itself. While I enjoyed having a storyline to follow last year, I think that performing pieces that the students at Voice for World can directly relate to is a more fulfilling experience.

My dance this year was called Durga Puja, after the goddess Durga who is worshipped at the destroyer of evil in the fight of goodness and evil. The dance is heavily prayer oriented, and is a key festival in Kolkata, where Voice for World is located. Before our dance, there was a short clip with two young children performing their own dance back at the NGO.

I find myself participating in Indian cultural experiences more and more. In the one and a half years in this school, I have done at least four different Indian cultural events. I find it interesting to immerse myself in part of the local culture, as I already have a stronger Chinese background. Therefore, I welcome the experience to learn new types of dancing, new types of music, and interact with others to support NGOs like Voice for World. It is well in my capacity to dedicate some of my time each week to preparing for a performance that can earn enough money and raise enough awareness to support the students at Voice for World, and that means far more to them I am sure, than anyone here can realize.

Participating in Kahaani for two years in a row has been such an enjoyable experience. I have met new people, created memories, learned how to dance differently, and supported something I feel passionate about. I am thankful UWC has given me the ability to combine my passions of dancing and helping others into one successful event.

 

Ladakh and Behind the Beautiful Forevers

This year, Ladakh GC decided that we wanted to begin expanding our horizons and working together to further the GC as a whole by raising more funds and awareness for our cause. Last year, we organized and held Run for Rights at Bedok Reservoir, which was one of the main ways in which we were able to raise funds towards our goal. While Run for Rights was successful, it was organized along with two other GCs, Daraja and ACE, and Ladakh this year was hoping to be able to do an event that can be distinctly branded as Ladakh GC’s.

It was a late opportunity, but the service department informed us that we would be able to hold a sort of bake sale at the grade 12 drama production of Behind the Beautiful Forevers. In particular, as Behind the Beautiful Forevers is set in Mumbai, India and revolves around under-privileged individuals who lack the opportunity to leave the life they are currently living, there is a resonance with Ladakh as we work in Ladakh, India, and help a school in order to support children out of their current lives through education.

We were not able to directly sell food or drinks at the event, but we worked together with the Parent Association to bake and cook various food items that would be given for free but with a plea of donation. Especially after explaining what Ladakh GC is and what we aim to do, many people wanted to support our cause and donated money to us. Over the course of two nights of “selling”, we were able to earn 382.30 dollars, which will go into part of our overall earnings that will later be used for the Lamdon School. Everyone was really proud of us earning this amount, because we didn’t have a large amount of preparation time and also because of the difficulty with not being able to sell the food directly. While Ladakh GC may be rather small, we are hoping that other small projects like this will add up and help us improve and grow together, and also for future members, so that we may better support the Lamdom School and their goal.

 

Ladakh Personal Reflection 2019-2020

Why I joined Ladakh GC:

I have always felt that education is important, especially since I have had the opportunity for a large portion of my life to attend international or private schools around the world, where I’ve been privileged to have a wise variety of resources and tools open to help me learn. As there are many regions of the world where literacy rates are low, especially in areas where children cannot go to school because of family or economical reasons, I believe it is important to support people that don’t have the same resources available to them as I do. Therefore, as Ladakh GC follows the UN Sustainable Development Goal #4 of Quality Education, I felt that it was a cause similar to one that I believe in. Additionally, the Lamdon School (Ladakh GC’s partner school) incorporates Ladakhi culture into their curriculum so culture is preserved in addition to developing other necessary skills.

Project Week: Service

Tuesday:

Since there was another Project Week group working with School For Life, we agreed that they would complete the other aspects of their CAS plan while we went to School For Life for our service aspect of the trip. On Tuesday morning, School For Life brought the girls back to their chosen accommodation and picked us up from our hotel in the Old City. We sat in the back with two of the girls from School For Life, who were really friendly and excited to see us. Although their English was limited and our Thai nonexistent, we were able to swap names and ages, and found out that they are similar in age to us. One of the girls mentioned she liked to listen to K Pop when we were talking about what type of music we like, so Rhea played some K Pop from the girl group Blackpink and we sang along as best we could (which was poorly) but the girls knew most of the words and we had fun. School For Life is around an hour drive away from Chiang Mai city, but it was easy going and we saw more of Thailand in the truck. School For Life was located deep inside a forest and nature area, and was a very large complex. When we arrived, we were met by the other students in the oldest grade, and we were shown our two rooms in their guest area. After giving us some time to unpack and get ready for the rest of the day, we spent the next hour or so playing icebreaker games and getting to know the other students. The group split into two and we got a tour of the School For Life campus, which was very natural. There were living facilities for teachers and students, sports and music facilities, several classrooms, a cafeteria and joint kitchen, offices, a library, a communal assembly hall, and farm areas. We walked all the way to the farm area, and the main academic and living area was concentrated in the front while the back end of the land area was for sports, music, and farming. They explained that the children helped farm and cook, taking turns with their class to help. In the farm area, one of the students in my tour group grabbed some mangoes from the mango trees they had, and as we walked back, explained to me some of the Thai words for various plants. While the students broke for lunch together in the communal cafeteria, we ate lunch in a separate guest area and discussed our plan for dancing which was our first activity and schedules for that afternoon. We chose to teach a modified version of a Kahaani dance that Mallika choreographed and Rhea and Isabella participated in. Aarushi and I spent an hour going over the dance several times again to ensure we also knew it. The dancing was actually very successful despite the dance being a difficult one. Everyone was enthusiastic to learn despite the dance being intimidating, and we quickly taught all the choreography within an hour. By the end everyone was smiling and laughing and enjoying themselves, and we didn’t focus on the precision of the movements rather the community feeling everyone shared and enjoying oneself with the activity. After we taught our Indian dance, we motioned for a trade, since we discovered that K Pop seemed to be very popular with the students, and the girls who rode with us in the truck were very familiar with the dances to many songs and could perform them herself. Thus, we had her teach us, but we spent most of the time watching her dance while we tried to stumble along in the background, but I enjoyed that part the most. At that point, the younger children were done with school, so many of them were sitting in the room watching us all dance. At the end, the teachers asked us to perform the dance as one large group the next day to the rest of the school, so that they would get to experience it as well, and we agreed. 

 

 

Wednesday:

Despite having separate rooms, we all slept together in one of the rooms. There wasn’t access to wifi in the majority of the compound, so the atmosphere was very peaceful and the rooms had large windows that looked out into the surrounding forests. We spent some time getting ready for the morning assembly, which some of the other volunteers explained as being a meeting with everyone in the community for announcements and school events. The students all lined up in order of age with the youngest class on one side and the oldest on the opposite. The teachers were spread out around the children. There were several announcements both from teachers and some of the older students, and there was a school chant in both English and Thai. While much of the announcements were in Thai, there was a part of the morning where everyone participated in stretching with music accompaniment that were able to follow along with. It was quite brief, but we all enjoyed the ceremony and the common theme of School For Life with having strong community relationships. After everyone ate breakfast, we did arts and crafts with a younger class, around grade 7, and the two long term German volunteers who would be acting as translators throughout the duration of our stay. Many of the girls knew various origami animals or flowers, so we spent two hours learning different origami types and drawing pictures. I was personally curious about learning origami, since it was something that I was never good at. It was also nice to be able to do something simple and have conversation without any outside distractions. Everyone was very focused on participating in the activity and I found that something nicer than what we usually have in our lives with all the technology and quick access to information. School For Life let my group and I slow down and step back from the fast pace of life. In the afternoon, we chose to participate in different activities that the children would do since Wednesday afternoon was the time where all the students participated in a club or activity of their choosing. Mallika, Rhea, and I joined Thai traditional dance, and Aarushi and Isabella went to do organic farming. In the general assembly hall where many of the larger group activities were held, we were joined by a younger mixed class of boys and girls along with a very young class of children no older than six. It seemed that the teachers would be sitting back more as supervisors since two of the boys took it upon themselves to organize everyone in two circles. We started in a kneeling position facing into the circles and the students to our left and right showed us what to do. Everything was done within a count of 8, and for our benefit and understanding they all did it in English. We quickly learned that it was not dancing we were doing, but Muay Thai, because after around three counts of 8, the two boys who were leading suddenly spun into a standard fighting pose opposite each other. Rhea was dragged to be with a little girl in the other group, but Aarushi and I were each pair with one of the leading boys while the other children split up to be with each other. While everyone seemed fairly familiar with the moves already, the boys had to repeat the steps in each 8 count several times before we were able to move on to the next section. While fun, there was definitely a large amount of stress since everyone seemed rather amused by the three of us and we really couldn’t understand many of their corrections. Overall though it went really well until one boy braced himself and the other one ran up onto the leg he braced and 

kicked up and over before landing opposite the boy once again. That was where it all completely devolved because really no one else could do it. I would do it again, or for a longer time, but we did definitely join in at more ofa middle level than a true beginner, so it would have been nice to spend longer with the boys to learn at a slower pace and from the beginning. Apparently the organic farming was very successful but perhaps even more tiring, since they were in direct sunlight but we had some cover. Everyone went back to class and we went back to our rooms to shower and share our experiences. In the end, everything was rather different than how we thought the afternoon would pan out but still a good experience nonetheless. Towards the evening, we went back outside to play with some of the children who were playing on the playground before dinner, and they took great delight in the see saw, something I definitely do not find delightful. They rushed off to dinner and we went back to the guest area for ours, and had another delicious Thai meal. All the meals we had so far were very authentic and they were very accommodating to the different allergies that we had, for which we were very thankful. 

 

Thursday:

We had to leave around midday for our flight back to Bangkok and Singapore, but we planned to bake during the morning with one of the classes. After the morning ceremony, we drove with some of the teachers to the nearby town around 20 minutes away, where we went to a market to buy all the ingredients that we had preset for our baking. While we had considered that butter would be hard to find and so found a recipe that substituted butter, we didn’t consider things such as cinnamon not being powdered and that there wouldn’t be many tools like large bowls or measuring cups. The same girls who did arts and crafts with us were going to be baking with us. Since there were no measuring cups, we used a large rice pot to mix all the ingredients, and small plastic bowls to measure out the ingredients as best we could. We also used a mortar and pestle to grind the cinnamon sticks into powder. When we practiced the recipe at home, they didn’t turn out to be that appetizing, so we modified certain aspects and then tried the modified version at School For Life. I’m amazed the cookies even turned out as well as they did, because we guessed the majority of the amounts. They did take a long time to bake, but that was because we were all listening to K Pop and rolling the dough in sugar balls and generally enjoying ourselves. While the last of the cookies were on baking sheets waiting, we washed up in the communal dish washing area, and waited for some cookies to finish. After leaving instructions with the German volunteers, we had to leave for the airport. We never saw the majority of the cookies baked, but all the children that we had gotten to know came and said goodbye, and as we left in the truck all the children were gathering for lunch and waved goodbye to us when we drove past. We hadn’t anticipated Chiang Mai being like it was for us in the end, and despite all the difficulties we experienced while planning, the trip itself turned out to be an amazing experience, both with each other and with the CAS aspects that we had designed and participated in. It was in the end all about the people who made it worth it.

Project Week: Preparation

Before actually booking or researching, we first came to an agreement to complete the three aspects of CAS, through cooking for creativity, trekking for activity, and working at School For Life for service. This made the rest of the planning more straightforward since we all had a common goal and agreement of what we would like the trip to be. I wouldn’t say I had issues with my group at any point in the planning, and that was certainly quite the relief. From the beginning when we filled out the initial request form, each group member picked a role and followed through with it. I was first aider, and while this required more commitment than all the other roles, it didn’t mean that I didn’t help my group members when needed. Often times, I found myself filling in information or doing separate research, especially since I believe the coordinators actually thought I had a different role. Overall, it was very straightforward for us to find and coordinate the various parts of our trip. We had several Skype calls wherein we discussed plane tickets, accommodation, transport, and our different activities. As Chiang Mai was a very popular destination, the timing and duration of the trip had to be staggered and coordinated with the other 5 groups, and part of the UWC’s request was that there would be no interaction between groups, whether in the services, airports, or hotels. We requested to leave earlier rather than later since there were members of our group who had to be back in Singapore for the end of the given Project Week slot. Additionally, it was discussed with the other group going to work with School For Life that we would first completed our activity or creativity requirements before finishing our trip with service. With this in mind, we looked at airfare and tried to pick one of the cheaper flights (going through Bangkok instead of directly flying in). We also picked a location within Chiang Mai to concentrate our search for accommodation in, and settled with the Old City because lots of food, stores, and tourist sites were all within walking distance from one another and the area was relatively cheap and centralized compared to other hotel areas. I was responsible for looking for and booking cooking classes, so I researched various cooking schools online and found several located within the Old City that looked very promising. After having a meeting with our supervisor, I booked a cooking class with Thai Akha Cooking School. Around this time, we booked flights, and we found a very nice hotel for a good price that had a good location and had breakfast included. We also booking a one day trek with Wild Planet, a group that members of my group had actually trekked with previously on school trips in 8th grade. They were very accommodating, especially since one day treks were not typically offered. The actual booking of the hotel, cooking class, trekking, and plane tickets required flexibility and quite a bit of maneuvering, since they all required one other to be completed all at the same time. There were also shared difficulties between all the Chiang Mai groups that resulted in major setbacks in terms of booking, and we quite literally paid the price for the delay. I would say most of our problems came from working with the school instead of working with the the various partners in Chiang Mai, because there were many deadlines that needed to be completed by a set time, appointments that needed to be done with certain people on certain dates, and various other minor aspects of the trip that needed to be prepared for beforehand. Ultimately though, my group was not denied traveling to Chiang Mai last minute, and we had no issues with cancellations from any providers. 

Project Week: Investigation

While the school often says that you don’t necessarily need to be with your friends in order to complete Project Week, there is something to be said about building better bonds with the friends you already have. Luckily, I did not really experience the struggle many people had of not fitting in to any one particular group, and I ended up being with my two close friends and two other girls I got along quite well with. I knew that all the girls I was with were each organized and prepared to take initiative during the planning and trip itself, which was a very key point in being able to work together. We quickly decided to have a Skype call to discuss location, focus, and our general ideas for what we wanted as a goal. Using some older resources from previous years, we went through a list of locations and services. We decided that we would rather do service along with something else, if not all three aspects of CAS, rather than doing activity and creativity alone. Some of the locations would work because we also wanted to prioritize safety, and the areas or cities were in unsafe times or we wouldn’t be familiar with the area at all. We also wanted to work more with children or with education-based focuses as opposed to working in environmental or animal focused services. I really wanted to focus on working with education because my GC is an education focused group that partners with a school in India. While I was unable to go to the school for a variety of reasons, it didn’t mean I would forfeit my desire to focus on education. Therefore, I was quite excited to work with a group that was also passionate about education. We originally decided on a school north of Phuket to work with, that was located in a national park, but when new resources were sent out, we discovered that the list of approved locations and services were greatly reduced. Continuing on the same line, we chose School For Life in Chiang Mai, Thailand. It was located in a safe and familiar city, our service would be a school which fulfilled our focus, and UWC had pre-existing partnerships with various activity providers in the area. This meant that we had a good foundation to begin mapping out our ideal trip and see how we could best fulfill the different aspects of CAS in our own personal manner. We didn’t encounter many struggles into finding a location or focus because we all found ourselves in agreements about the various passions and interests that would help shape how we planned our trip, and this gave us a clear sense of direction that lasted the entire process. 

Kahaani: Show Week

I didn’t know that “Kahaani” meant “story” for the longest of times, but it truly lived up to its namesake.

From what I’ve come to learn about UWC, performances are intense and the amount of time that goes into preparing for the shows is far longer than anything I’ve done before. The week of Kahaani was very busy, with rehearsals until 8 or 9 pm for a few days. But, there was a large highlight to the preparations: people from Voice of World School For the Blind who are partnered with Kolkata GC came to UWC. We had an assembly and they presented to us how exactly the money and awareness that Kahaani brings is used, and they shared a humbling video of the goals that the school works towards. To actually see a physical manifestation of something that we dedicate our time and energy, there are very few words to describe that. I love the idea of actually seeing our efforts, because I think it became very easy to just think of Kahaani as another performance and event that the school has and forget exactly why we all dedicated ourselves to helping Kolkata GC. That was the most meaningful moment of the whole Kahaani experience to me, and made all the long rehearsals and other annoyances worth it. The people from Voice of World School also stayed the whole week to watch the performances, and I hope it brought them much pride and joy to see the amount of people that turned up.

Only since coming to UWC have I had such an immersion in a different culture, mostly due to the amount of different people from different ethnicities. Kahaani is only my second time doing Indian dancing, and it was so different from the first time. There is such a diversity in the styles of the dancings, costumes, and music that it is a constantly changing experience. Kahaani was still incredibly fun, there were so many people I knew in all the dances, and the show week was filled with so many fun memories. I hope to do Kahaani again next year, because it was only something to gain.

Ladakh Documentary

In Ladakh over two sessions, we spent the majority of the meetings watching a documentary that is set in Leh, Ladakh. The documentary was about how tourism is causing major changes within the economical and social aspects of living in Ladakh. The documentary was a mixture of many different interviews: some were from tourists, some were from local farmers, some were from local politicians and government workers. Despite this, the views were not as varied as one would think. Many of the interviewees believe that there have been some negative effects of globalization, especially to the native Ladakhi people.

Primarily, the growth in tourism was causing major changes with the Buddhist lifestyle of many of the locals. Much of the Ladakhi culture was being replaced or only highlighted for the purpose of drawing in tourists to Ladakh, which changed how the local people viewed their own culture. It became a tool to use in order to have financial gain. Especially because Leh is unreachable within the winter months due to dangerous weather conditions, the locals must utilize the summer months to the best of their abilities. As farming has decreased due to younger generations traveling from farms into the cities for work, there is a need for jobs within the city that can provide enough money during summer months to last workers for the rest of the year.

Here is a video of the discussion that our group had after finishing the documentary:

 

Ladakh: Run for Rights 2019

Run for Rights SWOT Analysis

STRENGTHS

The strengths of our service partnership are:

  • No one got lost – no one got hurt, we had the emergency team well coordinated
  • Lot of the stuff was available from last year so there was enough guides for logistics
  • Able to make a profit
  • Offered food and water
  • We planned for many different situations
  • Were coordinated
  • Marketed to the High School and many teachers were interestedWEAKNESSES

    Identify them and add strategies to minimise them:

    • Risk assessment was late as the guides of what to do weren’t organised
    • There needs to be a more logical order for what to do in terms of logistics
    • Less people for logistics
    • Confusion between pledge cards and risk bands
    • Too late for marketing
    • Unsure of placement in kilometer marker
    • Posters along the run weren’t visible or legible
    • Not enough people encouragement for runners – didn’t create the right environment (maybe need more people)
    • Wastage of food?
    • Not enough people showed up
    • Podcast
    • Not enough people to pack up event in school

OPPORTUNITIES
Further goals for our service partnership are:

      • Printing registration form
      • More communication with service office on the steps to organise events
      • Expectations and order need to be communicated by service
      • order
      • Maybe merge pledge cards and wrist bands into one
      • Clarify that pledge cards are competitive
      • Make it more of a family event
      • Earlier market
      • More organized shifts for GC members to allow members to participate in event
      • Move the date to not be close to exams etc.
      • More people for packing up the event on Saturday in school
      • Put snacks and water every kilometer for runners to hydrate and eat

THREATS

Identify them and add strategies to overcome them:

  • Weren’t extremely prepared for rain or lighting
  • Deadlines were cut close
  • Not properly marked hazards
  • Markers were wrong so runners confused

Ladakh Video

In Ladakh, we’ve recently been working in small groups in order to produce three separate videos that can combine to form one video that displays the different goals and plans of Ladakh GC, along with how they connect to the goals and plans of the group that Ladakh GC works with.

My group was set to answer the following questions:

  1. What are the goals for Ladakh GC this year?
  2. How do the goals of both Ladakh GC and the Lamdon and Thiksey schools overlap with the UN SDGS?
  3. What does the Lamdon school do for its students in terms of education?

This involved some research from all the different members, and I directed the younger members to focus on the first question, while myself and another 11th grader each took question 2 and 3 respectively. From this, we then wrote an audio script that would be recorded separately from the visuals.

The Audio Script:

In Ladakh GC, we aim to cover multiple aspects of service in order to best support out NGO. Our indirect goal for Ladakh GC is to raise money for improving infrastructure, specifically improving sanitary conditions, while our direct goal is to raise funds, $1000, to purchase musical and sports equipment and send a project week group to Ladakh.

Part of the UWCSEA core values is to have a strong connection to the world around us, and to have personal engagement in global issues. As a result, all Global Concern service groups are connected to at least one of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, along with the personal goals of the NGO or organisation.

The UWCSEA Ladakh GC aims to promote Ladakhi culture whilst aiding the efforts of Lamdon school; this will be by providing necessary classroom materials and organizing 1 key event that we will raise majority of our funds by.

The schools that we work with, the Lamdon and Thiksey schools, have a specific mission that Ladakh GC supports through shared beliefs. The schools have an extensive list of their missions and visions, as can be seen below.

Vision and Mission of Lamdon School:

  • To eradicate evils from society by lighting the lamp of education, thus to have a fully content, happy and healthy society
  • To achieve our aims and objective
  • To provide quality education and equality to all
  • To preserve and promote the rich cultural heritage of Ladakh
  • To teach the Ladakhi language as a compulsory subject
  • To install good values in the minds of the children
  • To inculcate a sense of a responsible citizen
  • To teach the basics of Buddhism from the start
  • To provide free education to the children from poor families (by promotion of sponsorship)
  • To provide an education grounded in our own culture to lead a happy and prosperous life

Overall, the mission of the schools are to improve society by giving children of all backgrounds the opportunity to receive a quality education that encompasses the cultural heritage of Ladakh, the sense of good values, and the understanding and participation of Buddhism.

From this, it is possible to connect the goals of Ladakh GC and the Lamdon school to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals number four and number ten, which are quality education and reduced inequalities, respectively. These goals align closely with target 4.7 of quality education that: By 2030, all learners can acquire the knowledge and skills needed to promote sustainable development, including, among others, through education for sustainable development and sustainable lifestyles, human rights, gender equality, promotion of a culture of peace and non-violence, global citizenship and appreciation of cultural diversity and of culture’s contribution to sustainable development.

The goals of Lamdon and Thiskey overlap with the goals of the UNSDGS in terms of giving quality education to those that can’t afford it, reduce inequality and bring about a change for a better world.

The Lamdon School in Leh has 2175 students and nine other branches all over Ladakh including in the most remote areas. Eight hundred of these students are sponsored by various different donors. The Lamdon School is especially devoted to helping children from remote areas and poor backgrounds and charges a very nominal fee from those students who do not have sponsors. It focuses on preserving their culture and to which end it has made Tibetan Language compulsory till class 8. Those students interested in pursuing their traditional language have the option of continuing with it till class 12. The school has two residential hostels – one for the boys and the other one for the girls. This is an essential aspect of a school devoted to making education accessible for children from remote areas. A hostel acts as a home away from home for these children and they become a family of sorts as their families are mostly very far away. It is critical to the development of a child to have a safe sanctuary to grow up in.