Category: Creativity

Project Week CAS Reflection – Planning

by sohan75105@gapps.uwcsea.edu.sg

For my project week trip we organised 5 days of volunteering with Voice of World an NGO partnered with our school, they function as an orphanage and home for disabled children, providing them with a safe home and the medical care they need. VOW also organises various trips for them like mountain climbing expeditions for the more able kids and various other outings around India. As our school raises money for them through Kahaani a dance showcase I was involved in planning we decided for our activity we would undertake dance classes and we were fortunate enough to learn from one of India’s best classical dancers Tanusree Shankar which was an amazing experience as although Kahaani had sparked a love of dance in me I had never had the opportunity to attend a dance class. We also attended some painting classes at an art school as our creativity aspect which was a nice experience however not as impactful as the activity and service elements of the week.

Planning Project Week was a really interesting experience for me as I had never organised any trip before myself, and had never communicated with an NGO as although I was part of a GC in school I was never chair and therefore didn’t communicate directly with the NGO. This was a really vital experience as it not only taught me how to communicate professionally with organisations but how to utilise connections and build relationships with organisations abroad. We were also travelling to a part of India I had never been to and don’t speak the language for so general communication with some of the organisations was very difficult due to the language barrier which is something I learnt to overcome through this

 

Looking back on IFP (LO4) (LO5) (LO2)

by sohan75105@gapps.uwcsea.edu.sg

I’m currently on the flight back from Timor Leste after completing the conference so I thought this would be the perfect time to reflect on the entire process from initial delegate selection to when we said goodbye. This process has been incredibly challenging emotionally, we have been sharing our experiences almost continuously and some stories have been incredibly shocking and humbling. However, we have all bonded tremendously because of this we have all exchanged phone numbers and there were a lot of tears as we left. I think this experience has taught me how to be a lot more empathetic than I was before and how to deal with these situations as I had never found myself in a similar situation before and at first I was lost as to how to respond.

The planning itself was an incredibly challenging process as I had never planned an event before, forget a conference! I have never been more grateful to my team than I have throughout this process as I am certain the entire thing would have fallen apart without everyone’s incredible work ethic and contributions both throughout the planning stage to the final conference where we continuously helped out others on their theme days rather than leaving them to fend for themselves. This whole process has been incredibly beneficial and eyeopening for me and I am excited to carry these skills and experiences into the future.

IFP : Mid-Planning Reflection (LO7)(LO6)

by sohan75105@gapps.uwcsea.edu.sg

We have officially hit the halfway mark for planning our IFP conference!!! It has been a crazy journey so far but I think now the implications of all we learnt about conflict resolution pre-conference selection is becoming apparent now that we can apply it to the specific context of Timor Leste.

Back in the theory days of IFP we focused a lot on conflict resolution through communication and understanding the norms and cultures of the various people/communities involved. We have tried to apply these same concepts to the context of Timor Leste by decreasing the scale of things and creating scenarios such as an argument between friends or a child and their parent and asking the delegates to roleplay how they would resolve these scenarios.

However, as an entire team, I think we have started to focus more on the sensitive nature of some of these issues such as gender imbalance or racial issues withing Timor Leste due to the sensitive nature of them because we don’t want to offend anyone’s religious beliefs or social values but rather open their minds in a non-aggressive manner. One of the key issues in Timor Leste is gang violence, and we have had to be very careful when we address this issue as the wrong word can be taken as offensive to someone or their family members or seem dismissive of their experiences. We also have to constantly be aware of what we talk with delegates about outside of the facilitator delegate dynamic because we don’t want to end up unknowingly encouraging someone towards any harmful behaviours.

IFP – Conference Selection and Early Stages (LO3)(LO5)

by sohan75105@gapps.uwcsea.edu.sg

I was selected to partake in the IFP Timor Leste conference which I am thrilled about. We have just begun to start planning and allocate ourselves into groups each will look after a day in the conference which will be themed with one of our key topics (e.g. Conflict Resolution Day) as well as separate groups that will help organise the logistical elements like rooming, toiletries and schedules for our delegates.

Currently, we are laying the framework we are going to build the conference off, soon we are going to begin fleshing this out and allocating specific parts to people based off of their skills such as the artistic members will be making posters and the best public speakers will create mini lectures. I am super excited to see this through and I am so glad that I am not solely responsible for this huge workload, I don’t think I have ever appreciated my team more than now. There is absolutely no way I could have completed this entire conference alone the workload is incredible and every member of the team has added something unique to our conference schedule. For example, I would be hopeless at creating amazing posters or planning activities but I excel at the mini-lectures element