The CAS Project was a way to showcase my leadership skills and helped me to give back to the community I have been seeing for the past 12 years. I have been in this school since PYP-1 and the support staff since the first day have always made sure that students are comfortable in school and feel welcomed. They make sure our surroundings are clean, our food we eat is good, our experience in the school is perfect. Therefore when I heard about doing something for this community, I was excited but I knew it was going to be a challenge because I had not taken such leadership before and I knew that I wanted to do it.

My peer and I were leading this activity and we had just a month to plan it all and get everything ready. At first it was very tough to note down what all we wanted to do for them on that day. I had a basic idea of doing sports and arts but we needed to go deeper and find out what activities would they support staff enjoy. Last year when I participated, I was in charge of doing an activity however, this year I was leading the whole event. This helped me as I was able to talk with my peer about the activities they liked, especially in sports. I knew that cricket would be a game that definitely will attract people and therefore I told my peer that we had to organise it.
In the latter stages, we decided that we would split up and he would work on the art section, while I work on the sports part of it. I had to contact all the DP-1s that were working with us on this and I sent out a form asking them about what they were going to do. This would give me an idea about the equipment they would want and how they were going to set up their activity. The most challenging part for me in the planning stage was getting everyone together because we all had different schedules. Not only the students, but even meetings with the teachers were tough to manage with our workload and their time when they were free. However, my peer and I worked in order to find out when everyone was free so that we could finalise plans and have all the logistics in place before the day of the event.
The day was coming closer and there were still many things we had to sort out. We knew that there was equipment needed, and the students were going to get the equipment a day before, however the store is not open on Friday’s therefore they had to get it 2 days before. We talked to Ms. Priyanka, about the final logistics and what was going to happen on the day. I explained the sports bit and how the games were going to be panned out and the set up required. I then went to Mr Gerald with my peer, and we discussed about the painting and what was required for that.
Once everything was set up, we were ready for the day, 29th February 2020. This day was tough for me because I had to overlook two sports and had to keep running from the MPH to the Basketball court to see if everything was fine. Throughout this one month of engaging with the CAS Project, I learnt a lot. I learnt how to deal with pressure and lead an activity and how much time it takes to organise such an event. This shows how our teachers plan and how organised they are compared to us. I feel this CAS project made me connect with all the 7 outcomes in some way or the other, and I was happy to do this project as it made me appreciate all the hard work the support staff put in to make my schooling experience better and productive.