Cultural Capsule was an event organized by my peers as a part of their CAS project. The motive behind organizing the cultural capsule was to plan fun activities and games incorporated with culture and spread that knowledge to the underprivileged children.  

A lot of children don’t get access to quality education along with extracurricular activities that play an important role in one’s health and well – being. Hence, I chose to be a part of this event because I personally love working with younger children and understanding them. This event was a step towards creating a safe and fun environment for those children who are less privileged than us, and this step was begun with a local school (sungrace).

The event was held on 19th Feb, 2023 where we reached the Sungrace school and welcomed the children to various activities, which included sand art, read aloud, paper lanterns, paper rangolis and garba. I wanted to try a different form so I taught garba to the children.

This event catered to both the service & creativity aspect of CAS because we dedicated sufficient time and effort to ensure the process and the execution of the event flows smoothly. While also ensuring that all the activities are fun and engaging and in a way express different cultures and celebrations.

This event catered the following LOs

LO 1 : Identify own strengths and develop areas for growth

I like dancing, I feel I can do garba well and I am quite experienced in garba as I have been a part of the Navratri festival since I was a child. Doing garba played as my strength as well as my teaching and communication skills because I was able to clearly demonstrate the garba steps so that the children could learn. However it was a little challenging as the children were young and of different ages, some of them were easily able to catch up, whereas others were struggling so we had to go at a slower pace where everyone could learn the steps thoroughly and be on the same page.

LO 3 : Demonstrate how to initiate and plan a CAS experience

As I was a part of the garba team, We had to plan accordingly of how we were going to initiate the process. We faced a few issues while playing the songs, as we had to set the pace of the song slow, other than that we had to keep rehearsing the steps with the children multiple times as they were struggling and make a few improvisations on the spot to make it easier for the children. But overall me along with my peers were quite organized with an overall schedule and tasks and were able to timely complete our agenda.

LO 4 : Show commitment to and perseverance in CAS experiences

Despite having other classes and projects to attend to, I demonstrated commitment by attending the session of the cultural capsule event. Although it was occasionally difficult to get the students’ attention because they were young and in different age groups, I tried to be persistent and demonstrate in the most straightforward and efficient way possible to help the kids cope with the process.

LO 5 : Demonstrate the skills and recognize the benefits of working collaboratively

Since this was a student-led programme, there were multiple students working on each activity. This required teamwork from planning to completing the task with children. Working cooperatively with other volunteers, I used my social, leadership, and communication abilities to make informed judgements that ensured the event ran smoothly. This experience helped me better understand my peers, and working with them was really simple because everyone could keep up with the tasks. As a result, we were able to aid the kids so they could learn in an engaging way.

LO 6 : Demonstrate engagement with issues of global significance

This experience was related to several SDGs, including good health and well-being, quality education, and reducing inequalities, as it provided access to underprivileged students through quality education and included them in various activities to maintain a balance in their health and well-being, and as a result, some inequalities between social and economic status were reduced. As a result, each of these SDGs highlights global concerns, its importance and encourages small actions to make the world a better place.

To conclude, I thoroughly enjoyed this experience and loved to be a part of this. This experience taught me to treat everyone with the same respect and kindness, regardless of their background or economic status, and it not only helped the underprivileged children grow and learn. It also gave us students an insight on how these children live the way they do and still be content. Our relationship with them was so sincere, the occasion was real and wholesome, and the grins on their faces demonstrated the success of our event.

Evidence :-