CAS Final Reflection

Final CAS Reflection

Learning Outcomes	Achieved?	Nature/Location of Evidence
Increased awareness of their own strengths and areas of growth	YES	After I started doing CAS, I was part in many activities which made me more aware of my strengths. All the activities seemed to be. I always preferred to be away from taking leadership or engaging in activities that I was not part of before.  But doing CAS made me do so and therefore it made me grow stronger in different areas. For example, for creativity, I joined my mother in helping her make Rangoli for this Indian festival. This made me aware of the strength I had in this art. (Link). Also, being a leader in RCCI made got me engaged in fund raising activities. For example, we donated bags of new toys for kids. I got aware of my leadership skill in this activity. (Link). My other quality that I realized though RCCI was to communicate with kids even though I can’t speak their language. I thought that it is impossible to talk to such kids, but soon I found myself having conversations with them through signs.  (Link)
Undertaken new challenges	YES	There were different stages where I had to undertake new challenges: One was during my yoga practice where I had to concentrate and remain calm. It was the first time I was doing yoga, so it took a lot of hardwork. Also, by doing so I realized that, doing yoga made me stronger and taught me to undertake other challenges with more ease. (Link) The other challenge which I think was the most challenging was singing. I always loved singing but I never sung. So I finally got a chance to perform. It was very challenging as I’m not trained with any form of music. But I undertook this challenge so that I can fulfill my wish. (Link)
Planned and initiated activities	YES	There were many activities that had to be planned. In RCCI as a leader of it, I had to once plan a presentation for the students in OSC so that they can know about the CAS and decide which CAS they will join. (Link)  During WWW trip, I was part of the planning committee where we planned all the activities that we will be doing during our trip. (Link)
Worked collaboratively with others	YES	There were many situations where we had to collaboratively work others. One main one was during WWW were there were most of the interactions. I had to work collaboratively with everyone so that we finish our work with perfection and fulfill our purpose of doing service. (Link). The other activity was during Grade 11 when I was learning to make Indian clothes. I had to work collaboratively with my teacher as it was hard to learn on your own and it was necessary to work with her so that I learn properly. (Link)
Shown perseverance and commitment in their activities	YES	I had to show a lot of perseverance while learning to cook as I realized that it is a really hard job to do. (Link) Also, my first class in making a Kurta required a lot of perseverance as it was very challenging. (Link)
Engaged with issues of global importance	YES	I was part of RCCI which got me engaged with kids who have mental disabilities. With this type of problem increasing worldwide, I realized that I was being part of this global issue by helping them. So this made me do different donations for them like.  (Link, Link). Also I was the director of an international service committee- Key Club. This made me aware of other global issues around the world and learnt how other are dealing with the problem. (Link)
Considered the ethical implications of their actions	YES	I had to be careful about ethical implications during my service time. During fund raising, I had to make sure that all the parents who helped us were treated nicely. They came to school to donate toys, so we had to make sure we thank them. Lack of attention would lead to ethical implications. (Link). During Thursdays, were RCCI children came to our school, we had to be careful when being there as any loose of patience can lead to ethical implications. (Link)
Developed new skills	YES	After doing CAS, I developed a lot of new skills. I learnt to cook some Indian food (Link), learnt to do yoga (Link), learnt to sing a bit (Link), learnt to paint murals (Link), learn to make kurta and salwar (Indian clothes) (Link) and at last developed skills in terms of leadership qualities and confidence.

Making rangoli for Holi

Rangoli that we made

This year, the India's colorful festival, Holi was celebrated in a cultural centre. This time my mother along with her friends was given the responsibility to make Rangoli, a form of Indian art, near the entrance. This will make the entrance look prettier and will add to the Indian atmosphere that we were trying to create. In grade 10, I did my personal project on Rangoli, so I learnt that art during that period and now I wanted to develop my skills on this form of art by helping my mother in making this Rangoli. I was again aware of this strength of mine in making this Indian art. It was surely a challenge in filling the colors in those small areas. I had to be very careful and make sure that I work with patience and in collaboration with others. I enjoyed doing this 2 hour long work and was very satisfied with what we made. 

Yoga practice

Practicing Yoga

After completing my Yoga classes in the Indian Cultural Centre last year, this year I mainly focused on continuing what I learnt.  I planned to practice this at least 3 times a week. To make sure that I don’t forget the asanas, I kept track of them by writing them and then practicing them step by step. This will make sure that I do the right positions at the right time. By doing yoga, I was aware of my strengths and realized how beneficial it is in my daily life. I could easily undertake challenges as I think practicing yoga is a great stress relief.  Learning yoga has made me develop this new skill to a higher level where I started looking for online tutorials. 

Goals of Semester 2

This semester will be the final semester for me in CAS, so I have to make sure that I do well this semester and be productive. My goals for this semester are a bit different. This semester, I plan to do more in each activity. This will be a busy semester to handle. With the exams coming in May, I have to make sure I balance all my activities. My goals for each activity are as below:

Cooking: My goals for cooking this semester is to learn to cook more sweets. This will be something that I always enjoy doing. I also made plans to learn to cook sugar-free food after achieving this goal. My mother knows how to make Indian sweets, so I will be learning from her. My goal is to learn to make atleast 2 sweets before the end of this semester.

Yoga: I have been practising yoga three times a week. I'm not able to go to classes anymore, so I'm not able to learn more about it. My goal is to continue doing what I learnt. This will be beneficial for my physical and mental health.

RCCI: We make sure that children are always enjoying their weekly visit to OSC. We have tried including different activities for them to do. But this year I want to do some fund-raising. As a leader, I want to be mroe productive. We are planning on different possible things that can be done to raise money. T-Shirt painting is one of them.  I will discuss this plan in mroe detail in my next post. This fudn raising activity will be for the primary children who can paint a T-Shirt and buy them.

Cooking Halwa (Indian Sweet)

Halwa that I made

This month, me cooking aim was to learn to make the popular Indian sweet dish, Wheat Halwa. This sweet is made mainly from wheat, sugar and clarified butter.  I learnt to make this sweet from my mom who has been making this since she was young. She first explained the origination of this dish briefly and then started instructing me on the ingredients that I need. I started following the instruction and realized how hard it is to put together all the ingredients. This gave a me a new experience where I'm improving my cooking skills. I also understood the importance of patience while cooking food. I worked collaboratively with my mom, she made sure she did not put any ingredient by herself, in the other hand she made me do all of it so that I learn more effectively.

The dish was served to my family. They liked the taste of it, even though it was not as good as my mother, it was a good try for the first time. I'm now happy that I learnt to make one of the most popular dishes from the Indian cuisine. I will make sure that I continue to learn and make more. :)

Singing for the first time! :)

Kuval and I before the performance

Singing has always been something I wanted to do but it was also something that I was not really good at. But, this Diwali (an important festival in India), I wanted to try singing with my friend Kuval. The function was held by the Indian Embassy in the Taj in Colombo. We were given the chance to sing. (I couldn’t get a picture of us singing though, I have a video but it is not much clear to see). We sang a Hindi  song and tried our best to impress the audience. I realized that I had this other strength in me which I was not aware of before. This challenge was something I voluntarily took and now I was able to prove that I could do it.   I was happy and satisfied that I could do something that I thought that I cannot achieve. Also, I had to wear a saree for this performance, this made me involve myself more with my Indian community and our culture.  I wanted to develop this skill but right now I won’t have time to do that. However, I plan to do this in future. 

Raising toys for RCCI

 END OF YEAR GIFT FOR RCCI KIDS

At the end of the last year we decided to end the school year for the RCCI kids satisfactorily by trying to getting gifts in the form of toys, play boards, soft toys, and cartoon figures, sports equipments like balls, bats and skipping ropes. This was quite challenging as this was going to be my first fund raising activity. So we decided to make an announcement in the primary assembly and asked the kids to donate their old toys for the unprivileged. We even sent letter home so that it reaches the parent. This activity also made the OSC community aware of the global issues faced in this world, so they actively responded.It turned out to be that the primary has been really generous to the kids. We had just kept one box in the primary office for the kids to donate. But we got to know that the box is already over flowing in two days. There were a number of ethical implications with this because we had to make sure all the parents who came to donate their belongings were treated with respect, if anything goes wrong, they might be disappointed. So we took this challenge by making sure we thank everyone for their donation. This made us really happy and we collected a lot of toys in the one week notice. We even got lot of brand new toys for them. I realised that this strength in our CAS team can make us capable of achieving more. 

Toys we gathered for the kids

We later separated the good ones as in the ones that don’t scare these kids. We separated the Dinosaurs toys, scary animal figures and army figures. These toys often scared the RCCI kids. So we decided to give them rather simple board games, soft toys and the ones they would like. We gifted them on the last CAS day and we even gave a box of toys for the center. We still have some stored. We plan to give more this year.