DP 1 CAS Goals

CAS is a segment in the IB program which is inclusive of three distinct aspects; creativity, activity and service. I hope to use my blog as a platform to explore my emotions and feelings towards various experiences that I am yet to have, and ensure that I maintain a delicate balance of academics and extra curricular activities within my life as an DP student.

Creativity

This year, I hope to express my creative element by being actively involved and working as a part of the EXCO in Colombo Model United Nations (COMUN). Although I am not directly stepping out of my self-built comfort zone, since I joined this program two years, my lack of experience and fear of public speaking has often acted as the barrier that prevented me from interviewing for a position within the Executive committee, and as such suppressed my potential. However, this year my primary goal is to overcome the adversity of my fears and break free from the apprehension that has internalized over time, to follow my passion of thriving in a position that I once found to be near unmanageable. A sub goal that I hope that is an inherent byproduct of being in the EXCO is that this new experience will help me adapt to a variety of skills and polish the existing; time management and critical thinking. Outside of school, in terms of creative expression, my goal for this year is to complete my collection of poems that I have been writing. My short collection of poems serves as somewhat an extended metaphor for the people and daily occurrences that affect my life in a multitude of ways, thereby allowing me to express myself in my truest form.

Activity

Accompanying my academics, I hope to thrive in the sports sector of my life as I believe that this aspect plays a vital role in not only improving my physicality but mentally conditioning me for situations that I would have to endure later in life. Primarily, the main sport that I will doing for the entirety of this year is swimming, as I swim competitively within the SAISA team and in a private team; Starfish Aquatics. In terms of an ‘umbrella’ goal, I hope to make the SAISA team as I have done consecutively for four years. However, I have two main sub goals; the first requires me to improve my personal best for 100m breastroke, by three seconds as my current time is 1.23 and I hope to improve it to 1.20 seconds. Contrastingly, my second goal is geared towards enhancing my mentality to ‘losing’, as I feel that I constantly forget the importance of mistakes in terms of developing one’s self as well-rounded person. Overall, I wish to the transfer my newly formed mentality and important skills further in life.

Service

The Rehabilitation Center for the Communication Impaired (RCCI), is a service group that I have been actively involved in for five years; inclusive of being leader for a year. In Sri Lanka, speech and language disorders were often perceived as a taboo and stigmatized topic and therefore hidden under the limelight until 1993, in which the government sought to rectify this issue by creating RCCI. This focal point of this service is to provide speech and language therapy to those affected by interacting with them, especially focusing on improving their social skills and most importantly, supporting them through their journey of learning. As such, this service provides a di-pronged tactic in terms of education as not only do the cognitive and non – cognitive skills of the RCCI students improve but students from OSC heighten their emotional sensitivity and improve their ‘people’ skills as a byproduct of being a part of the program. In terms of a goal, I hope to enhance the effectiveness of my leadership by creating more awareness within the OSC community, and by extension Colombo society. This service isn’t particularly well known within the school committee as we are yet to hold any fundraises or marketing campaigns to gain endorsements to better the lives of the students, therefore this year I plan to organize three fundraisers; Winter Gala, Food and Fun Fair and Spring Gala. Through my close analysis of past leaders of RCCI, it is evident that marketing the service in terms of creating a signature brand that is memorable to those with a deep interest within the cause is lacking, and as such is long overdue. I plan to implement this goal by asking the OSC student population to design a logo for RCCI that we can paste on brand merchandise such as T-shirts and hoodies, in order to publicize the service itself and broadcast the positive impact created for the students. Therefore, with student involvement an immersive experience could be created thereby fostering interest within the community.

Furthermore, in terms of a private ‘service’ goal, I have been working on a project to raise awareness of the marginalized communities of low – income families in Sri Lanka, with special emphasis on women and children. This projected stemmed from a passion that I have internalized since its inception in Grade 5, where for a small scale ‘Exhibition’, I had to take action on an issue that I was passionate about and take some form of action. My overall impact was minimal, given that after thorough research and personal interaction with those affected, I wrote an open letter to the then President of Sri Lanka, requesting an increase in spousal support for victims of domestic violence. Although the amount only changed by Rs.100, the notion that I had even sparked a change inspired me to do more for this community. As such, my personal project was an extension of this issue as after a nine month researching period, I created a collection of short stories representing the real life struggles of Low income families in Sri Lanka. Therefore, currently I am working on officially publishing my book as an effort to raise awareness within the local community.