Swim4Life was an annually held event that raise funds for the global concern, SurfAid. This year on October 3rd 2018, it was reinvented as Swimdonesia, a collaborative event held by 3 different GCs: SurfAid, Jakarta Street Kids, and Gili Eco Trust. The event was based of the previous idea of sponsored laps swimming but this year a huge focus was on the more party aspect, including a floating obstacle course, floats, music, and food.
The event planning was a lot more extensive than I first imagined. There were quite a few meetings and presentations that I attended for various different reasons. Most of them were not within service hours, so it took some extra communication and organisation. The opportunity gave me a chance to hone and develop different skills, this included presentation making and poster design. I created multiple posters, using my graphic design skills, one for event awareness beforehand and two for the actual day. I think the biggest challenge that I had was getting up to present in front of the high-school teachers lounge simply because there were a lot of teachers and I was not exactly prepared, next time I would read the script beforehand.
The actual event went really well, a lot of people showed up. We together raised over $7,000, from entry tickets, food sales, and swimming sponsors. All the money was split between the 3 GCs. Also, the endurance swimmers (including myself) swam 259km which would equate to swimming to Mapur Islands (115km) and back. When I wasn’t swimming I was on the mic, selling merchandise, or of course taking photo… which can be found on my Flickr.
Overall, the event went really smoothly, with few problems. This was thanks to extensive planning, a helpful team and a lot of hard work. I like to think that I did a lot of work to make this event possible and I’m really proud with the outcome.
Learning outcomes and reflection questions topics included:
- Big picture (Goals, Action and Learning)
- LO 1 AWARENESS (Increased awareness of strengths and areas for growth)
- LO 2 CHALLENGE (Undertaken new challenges)/NEW SKILLS (Developing new skills)
- LO3 INITIATIVE (Planning and initiated activities)
- LO 4 COMMITMENT (Showing perseverance, resilience and commitment in activities)
- LO 5 COLLABORATION (Working together to achieve an outcome)
- LO 6 GLOBAL VALUE (Engaging with issues of global importance)
- LO 7 ETHICS (Considering the ethical implications of actions)
