Diversity in cultural experiences is one of the most important things one can have, especially as a student looking to study abroad. By having more knowledge about different countries and how they live, one can more easily comprehend and immerse oneself in the culture and lifestyle of a foreign country. In order to provide students and teachers with these experiences, I took up the organization of the French Immersion Event along with a few other students under the supervision of Amish Sir. This experience included the selection and making of various activities which were presented in a number of stalls available for students and teachers to access in a duration of 1 hour. Preparation started over a month prior to the event, and the majority of the work was completed in the week leading up to it. This experience provided me with the opportunity to learn how to organize an event, as this was the first time I had done anything event-related. I also gained skills regarding collaboration with both organizers and volunteers, overall providing a creativity and service based CAS experience.

This experience catered to creativity, because in order to form the most culturally immersive event possible, the other organizers and I had to come up with creative ways to add Francophone details that would help to educate attendees. This led to us making each stall themed after one of the seven most famous French speaking countries, Switzerland, Monaco, Belgium, Seychelles, France, Canada, and Niger. We made and put up the flags of these countries as well as informational posters which allowed people to understand what these countries are like in terms of their food, festivals, clothing, geography, and more. We also had to come up with and/or adjust existing activities as per our needs, which required creativity, whether in the designing of new games or time spent finding one that fit our needs. Decorations also played an important role in the aesthetics of the event, as we had to make large banners with names for the identification of each stall, flag lines that strung across the space, photo stall images with chalk and paper, and the aforementioned flags and posters.

The service aspect of this experience was also prevalent as the main goal of French Immersion was to help educate and immerse attendees regarding the culture of Francophone countries. Each stall provided educational information to those who attended, both in the form of fixed facts (posters/printouts) and student conversations. In the Bingo stall I managed, I taught the people the meanings of the words that they crossed out and also told them about the kind of lifestyle citizens of Monaco lead. Likewise, other volunteers explained things like the context of different French memes or the definitions of words through an image-word matching game. Through this event, people were also entertained, as they played games like Jeopardy! in competing teams and took photos with one another. Throughout the event, attendees were heard laughing and having fun. The people who came included 11th and 12th graders and school admin, which are the people who have the most stress and, in the case of the former, pressure for where they will live and study in the future. Our event helped to give them peace of mind and an enjoyable break at a stressful time in their lives.

The LOs catered included 1, 2, 3, and 5. I had to analyze myself and identify an area of weakness, which was my ability to organize events with different people. This was something that I had never done before, so when I was presented with the opportunity to help organize it, I thought about whether it would help me to gain skills that I didn’t have before and took the chance. LO 2 is closely linked to this, as I undertook this challenge for me in organizing the event and developed new skills including communication, decoration, leadership, and management of time and people. I also had to plan this entire event, adding to LO 3 as I took the initiative to be a part of the core organizing team along with four others. My conversations with these people as well as our supervisor helped me to learn how to better communicate and work collaboratively with others, dividing the workload to complete the tasks at hand. This caters to LO 5.

To conclude, this CAS experience gave me the opportunity to not only grow in my own abilities to work with others and coordinate an event with a large number of attendees, but also to help people to immerse themselves in a foreign culture. This educated these people and also allowed them to have fun at the same time, taking a pause to enjoy the people around them.