Final CAS Post

Posted on May 24, 2022 by cascoordinator under CAS Goals, DP2

My CAS blog is a celebration of many of the endeavors I took on over my IB DP journey and portrays the way in which I was able to apply various areas of my learning to extracurricular activities and beyond; so leaving it all behind is a bit of a bittersweet feeling. In fact, I would even go as far as to say that it played a crucial role in ensuring that I balanced my work and school life. An equilibrium that is essential to us, especially as students in the final stages of their IB experience. Looking back through my posts, I retrospectively feel a great deal of joy as I am reminded of all that I have accomplished in the past two years despite the many obstacles that came my way. I feel as though this experiences has most certainly heightened my versatility in terms of balancing school, creativity, activity and service.

*For the purpose of this post I will be spotlighting only a few memorable instances in which I exercised the CAS learning outcomes in my creativity, activity and service related projects.

Creativity

From learning new languages on my own, to getting creative in the kitchen, taking part in prestigious courses and events and promoting the growth of my own football editing account, I truly made an effort to make the most use of my time and talents in a way that would benefit everyone. Simultaneously, I also ensured that I was able to reflect on the strengths and shortcomings of each of my experiences.

(LO1) One of my longtime projects, “Reef Revival” I thrived in launching our social medias, getting widespread involvement and completing our action, while on the the downside we struggled with things like not being able to achieve our full potential due to the obstacle of Covid. Naturally this never hindered us as we worked tirelessly to make our project the success that it was, and even then we were happy to reflect on what we could do to improve future cleanups. This inspired a healthy mindset in me that I became open to receiving feedback and even identifying my own strengths and weaknesses.

(LO2) What comes to mind immediately when thinking about accomplishing the goals of undertaking new challenges, is my video editing adventures; a project that I took on when I was quite young (then gave up on) but decided to revive my passion for it in the DP for CAS. I was incredibly pleased that my accounts took off and that I got the hard earned recognition for the many hours I put into finding content, learning new software and painstakingly editing over the course of the years. In fact, given you know how much I love football, being seen by some of my all time favorite players and clubs, to this day, is one of my favorite personal achievements. That is to say of course, that it wasn’t without effort that that was accomplished. For example, I needed to push myself to try harder and make better quality edits using more advanced software. In fact, over the 2 years, I can safely say that I tried out and learned about 6 different editing applications (which isn’t near as easy as it sounds). Not only that but on of my biggest personal challenges was staying motivated, as editing so regularly was a bit of a tedious task, but I overcame that annoyance but creating a healthy and balanced editing schedule for myself.

(LO4) Initiating and planning CAS experiences in the IB creatively came primarily, in the form of me being appointed the Service Leader for the Hope for Kids service group in 2021 after a long-term commitment to the service group that I had been a keen member of since I joined school. (LO3) One of my foremost duties in my run as the service leader, was to ensure that the members of our team would be without fail, able to help the children of the cancer home in Maharagama regardless of the local interferences during the pandemic, before and after. My tasks as service leader only became infinitely difficult as Covid -19 struck the island, as we were prevented from visiting in person and could not meet the CCC Cancer Home’s beloved patients, but I ensured that the group stayed on the top of their game in terms of doing our part for the kids, and also the general OSC community. For instance, the Hope for Kids Staff Cricket match was one of the events suggested by myself, wherein we decided that we would have an all staff vs staff game at the OSC field in order to act as a fundraiser during which we also hosted multiple minor fundraising activities such as selling ice cream and thambili (king coconut). This took many months of planning and coordination as we had to reach out to a variety of stake holders from doctors to staff, parents and other members of the student ready to allow it to happen and we had a limited period of time under which we had to organize the event. And in retrospect, I couldn’t me happier with the way in which it was carried out given our circumstances; especially as we raised over 62,000 rupees from that one event alone, among the many other projects that I made possible through my role as Hope for Kids’ sole service leader in the 2021/2022 school year 🙂

(LO4) Such long-term commitments, have also made way to some really important milestones in my personal life. In the summer of 2019, I chose to pursue an internship at a renowned law firm, Sudath Perera Associates, where I worked for about a month in the Intellectual Property department. Following my eye-opening experience at the law firm, and convinced by the events that followed it ie. the BLM movement, I was convinced that legal order and justice was a potential career path I was interested in pursuing in the future. My CAS journey only heightened my passion for this path, as projects of mine such as Reef Revival only further attested to my keen sense of justice. Needless my desire to study law was only cemented in the following years as I took part in activities such as the Harvard Future Lawyer’s Program, the Margin and the IVY Girls lead program. They pushed me to learn more about how justice is achieved in the real world through creative solutions, and now, it is partly the reason why I will be pursuing a career and degree in law in the near future.

(LO5) Although I cannot pinpoint one specific example of when collaboration was pivotal to success, I can confirm that collaboration was the key to my achievements in nearly all creative ventures. Whether is be teammates and group members working alongside me to achieve service related goals, or whether it be my mom sharing a recipe with me for home cooked meals, or the team of aspiring attorneys that it took to win our final Harvard mock trial, teamwork has always been key to ensuring success in the long term. While many of these endeavors were initiated by myself, each person involved had a vital role to play in everything from logistics to the final activity being carried out, and for that I can’t be more grateful.

(LO6) Matters of global significance that I have combatted over the past few years using my creative ventures range from combatting against the marginalization of minority groups (the Margin), women’s empowerment (IVY Girls Lead, IVY Girls Rise) , gender inequality (women’s football edits), child cancer (Hope for Kids) to marine pollution (Reef Revival) and crime (Harvard Law Program) among other things.

(LO7) One of the lesser recognized goals in my DP CAS journey was to help out more at home, i.e. learn how to cook, do chores etc. Anyone who has been following my blog for long enough, would see the major learning curve I saw in my cooking abilities over the last few months. I had been working tirelessly to make meals that would simultaneously help lessen the workload for my mother while also enabling me to learn how to cook in preparation for university. I realized, that from an this was the right thing to do as my mom does so much of that during the day, I only wished that I had allocated more time to it because I often had to make exceptions for days when I was stressed under the amount of work I had. This goal helped both focus on the wellbeing of others in my family as well as myself in the long run. Personal wellbeing and mental health also had a great role to play in my creativity as often, it was things such as meditation, art or playing the guitar that helped me de-stress during some difficult times and by writing about it in my blog I was able to suggest ways of leading a healthier emotional lifestyle to others.

On another note, I could also say that my initiatives such as Reef Revival and other such interdisciplinary service ventures had a key role to play in making the world a better place for the party concerned whether it be young girls or local marine life.

Activity

(LO4) It is with a lot of pride that I am able to say that I pushed myself harder than ever before in my life to achieve some pretty incredible things in the field of sport in the past couple of years. If anything, I jumped at the opportunity to try different activities while remaining strongly committed to my pre-existing ones!

Here is a list of all the sports / physical activities I attempted and took part in over the past 2 years:

badminton
biking
body boarding
diving
fishing
football
golf
hiking
kayaking
surfing
tennis
volleyball
workouts

(LO1) Each of the home-workouts that I took part in my time as a DP student, were specifically tailored to meet my physical needs. For instance, any and all football trainings led by me were specifically focused on certain aspects of my performance to improve upon. For instance, when I was at home training alone during the pandemic, I ensured that I increased the ratio of cardio training that I took on so that my stamina wouldn’t suffer too badly when I got back on the pitch. I suppose now I can say that it probably worked because we’ve come out on a win every football game of the season this year!

(LO2) From the list provided above, biking (for longer distances), bodyboarding, fishing, golf, hiking, kayaking and surfing are all brand new sports that I chose to take on this year. I seized every opportunity I could to take part in these activities and can fondly claim that although there are a few of them such as fishing and golf which are less suited to my tastes, I gave them my all and overcame the challenges that arose with them, such as learning to work as a team to navigate along the water on a kayak.

(LO3) Many of the home workouts along with my diving adventures were both planned and initiated carefully by me over time while I also constructed many of the lesson plans for the children I coached at Decathlon’s La Academia where even I took part. Therefore, I took the initiative to lead by example with the activities I kept up with.

(LO4) Football and Badminton have been two of my longest running commitments in terms of activity that started since childhood. However, during my CAS journey, I never once failed to remain faithful to my training regimes and games etc. In fact, I would even say that it is those factors that contributed heavily to me accomplishing high levels of achievement in both from playing both internationally, locally (for club and varsity) and at an National Team level for football (ie. Maldives, School Football Games (seasonal win streak), TAFA) and competing in the national for badminton (69th annual championships). In fact I have been so committed to my football endeavors that I even began coaching younger children on a voluntary basis so that I could pass on my knowledge to them.

(LO5) As you may have noticed, many of the sports I play and love, are team oriented. In many of the games over the preceding seasons I was given the honor of taking more of leadership role in my teams as I was able to impart my experience on the younger players. Ie. coaching little kids, captaining the girl’s football team at school. That also goes without saying, that the reason why I love football in particular as my primary sport, is because of the energy that comes with celebrating with a team. No game could ever be won without everyone from the spectators to the players putting effort into it, and that’s the beauty of the game.

(LO6) Keeping fit and healthy has been a key element of focusing on improving my mental health; something that so many teenagers, especially students of the IB suffer with nowadays. Likewise, staying fit has also enabled me to combat things such as negative eating habits and illness, thus improving my immunity during the pandemic for example.

(LO7) I have ensured that I have been respectful to my teammates, coaches and alike and acted in a way that reflects strong sportsmanship like behavior which makes the field / court a much better place to thrive on.

Service

Coaching at La Academia (Assistant head coach)
Girls RISE (Mentor)
Helping out at home
Hope for Kids (Service Leader)
Ivy Girls Lead
Reef Revival (Founder)
The Margin (Journalist)

Given the content covered in the previous sections of the blog (much of which was interdisciplinary) I feel as though I have sufficiently discussed the learning outcomes associated with my service activities in the sections above. In a more general sense however, I am grateful that I have been able to access so many incredible leadership positions in so many different areas of service, that each combat a different global issue and I am amazingly proud of myself for having accomplished all those roles even despite the obstacles that the pandemic for instance has thrown my way. On a parting note, I hope that the things that I have made possible in my involvement in each Service activity has improved someone’s life for the better in some way, through both raising awareness and taking action.

To conclude, I have thoroughly enjoyed my CAS journey and come away a better person because of it.

With love,

Devanga

“Balance is a feeling derived from being whole and complete; it’s a sense of harmony. It is essential to maintaining quality in life and work.” – Joshua Osenga, cubicle slave

Service Leader: Hope for Kids 2021-2022

Posted on December 2, 2021 by cascoordinator under CAS Goals, DP2, Hope for Kids, Service Leader

Service Leader + Christmas / New Years Project

Sometime towards the end of last year I was notified that the position for service leader in Hope for Kids was opening up, since one of our previous leaders, Kenji, graduated. I had been a part of this service group dedicatedly for 3 years and I had tried to make the most of my contributions to the group itself in my time there. At the start of this year, I was elated to receive an e-mail initiating me as a service leader alongside my classmate Saesha. This had been a longtime commitment of mine with a cause that I was extremely passionate about contributing to, and I had also come with the added experience of knowing the trials and tribulations of trying to function in a service group in the midst of a pandemic. The e-mail that reached out to us also let us know that we were going to try and do our yearly Christmas present drive again this year, and that we had to perhaps reach out and go shopping with last year’s bake sale & donation funds to get the children gifts this year, but sadly this plan was halted as two of the patients at the home ended up getting COVID. And like I’ve said time and time again, our number one priority is ensuring the health of the children that we work with, so we were in mutual agreement under restrictions from the CCC house that we would be postponing the event.

However, after having an initial meeting with my service supervisor, Ms. Tanuja, we decided that we could still attempt to maintain the Christmas cheer, by creating a talent show for them and by doing a toy drive in early January in time for new year, and thus, Saesha and I were tasked with reaching out to the IT department and various members of the OSC staff to see if they were willing to put something small together for the patients at the CCC home. We also created a sign up sheet for student performers and are currently waiting for that to be filled up, although I must say, we already have a great variety of performances coming in from the staff members who were more than willing to participate which is very touching to see.

In the upcoming year, I look foreword to taking more of a leadership role in our service group and hopefully carrying it through another highly successful year once we are able to meet again! Oh and before I sign off, after some convincing we also decided that we would be lowering the age limit so that we could increase the manpower when we are not visiting the home 🙂

Adventures in Kalundewa

Posted on December 2, 2021 by cascoordinator under CAS Goals, Hiking

Staying Active on Vacation, Biking + Hiking/ Nature Walk + Kayaking

Biking

Views while biking in Kalundewa

This past month my family and I, along with a few family friends, ventured out to a location called Kalundewa in Dambulla which is located in the Central Province of Sri Lanka in the vicinity of Sigiriya (one of the island’s most renowned holiday location). On this trip I vouched to stay true to my goal of completing activity outside of the home whenever possible in unconventional ways.

The retreat we were staying at was extremely secluded with about a 100 acres of vacant land. This was amazing and we had a villa that was surrounded entirely by a lake and mangroves. Like anyone normal human, I could barely contain my excitement at seeing that each of the villas had around 5 bikes for transport and the bounds for riding them were, well… seemingly limitless. Just after lunch my friends and I decided to play a round of hide and seek (we were allowed to use our bikes to get as far away as we needed, but the only rule was that you had to have a phone on you and call if you weren’t found in 20 minutes). We played in pairs, and my partner and I, Mali decided to ride our bikes downhill from the restaurant, ditch our bikes and cut across this vast paddy field. The entire time we were fleeing in abject terror of getting bitten by something lurking in the grass, a snake perhaps, but we safely made it to the “safe house” which was a mud hut in the center of the paddy field. And hey, I only fell into a waist deep ditch once! We were hidden for a relatively long time but for some reason we decided that this hiding spot was just too good to give away and started running across the paddy field again. That’s when my brother spotted us and we were caught. Thankfully, we never gave our hiding place away. I would love to tell you that it all ended well but a few of the uncaught remaining people grouped up and decided to hide some-place that literally no one would find them, every time we tried to call they pick up and just end the call, which then resulted us in having to make around 6 rounds around the entire property to find them.

This wasn’t the least for our biking adventures however. We took bike rides regularly during our 4 day stay there, from the villa to the restaurant, from one bike trail to the other and we even had to bike to the swimming pool which was far outside of the property. This proved to be a great workout and I was left with extremely sore legs by the end of each day.

Everybody petting Oreo the dog after an exhausting hike

Hiking + Nature Walk

On the second day of our trip, the parents bustled about getting us to go on a nature walk. All the kids wanted to do however, was bike around and go swim. Needless to say our parents ended up reluctantly dragging us out to this nature walk that the manager of the hotel took us on. I must admit I wasn’t the biggest fan of it since he stopped literally every two seconds to point out some tree. The only thing of importance I really remember is him telling us about this tree with fruits that only elephants could consume and was used by ancient kings and queens to make poison, and if I remember correctly, and his was the only one in the whole of Sri Lanka. We were also briefly taken to see his greenhouse and his mushroom growing space which was rather fascinating. However, by around 12 in the afternoon we were all hungry, tired and had no water with us, and yet I doubt you would guess what the parents said. “Let’s go on a hike!” they said, “It will be fun!” they said. There was a collective amount of groaning as we were led towards yet another, long, and winding trail. My trip on this hike was made somewhat more arduous however as there were two babies on the trip, and one took a particular liking to me. Don’t get me wrong, I love babies, but much to my dismay a bit of baby babble directed in my general direction led me to suddenly having to carry another human being in my arms. I was exhausted, and yet that wouldn’t even begin to cut it. It was only then I realized what parents had to go through carrying their children everywhere. I motivated myself to walk the whole way through (without tripping or falling into the lake) thinking of it as a heavy arm workout. Thankfully, on the way back her dad took her back and… we had a puppy on the trail! It was a quick chase after that. All the kids were itching to get back to their rooms so we essentially sprinted back with this adorable dog on our heels.

Kayaking at golden hour

Kayaking

If you have been keeping up with my blog for around the past two years or so, you would know that I tend to have an affinity to kayak whenever I get the chance. This was one of those golden opportunities where the entire property was surrounded by this massive body of water, and this time my experience was made even more special because my kayaking buddy was my mom. It wasn’t my first time kayaking but it certainly was hers, so it was a patient process to try and teach her that the objective wasn’t to capsize. Shockingly enough she caught on fast, most likely inspired by her massive fear of deep waters so we were able to have a somewhat rocky yet enjoyable time. I also got to go on a solo kayak for the first time in a while which was really nice because I got to cruise down the lake at golden hour, it felt quite movie like.

Overall Kalundewa was a lot of fun and just the greatest opportunity to step away from the eye-sore that is the laptop and just step into nature for a little while. I certainly would recommend going there but even more so just going to resorts with lots of space, smaller crowds and rentable bikes in general.

Goal Setting DP2

Posted on October 9, 2021 by cascoordinator under CAS Goals, DP2

DP2 Goal Setting

With a new academic year in the horizon it felt essential to review and reflect on my CAS goals so that I can maintain a balanced extracurricular lifestyle in my final year of school. Despite the many challenges I faced the previous year when switching between online school, in person school and lockdown I overcame countless hurdles although now I look towards the new year with renewed optimism. I feel as though I have now experienced enough of this unusual pattern in the post COVID era to understand how to best juggle my CAS activities in a way that puts me more at ease. Now naturally there is a good chance that this year may be even more unpredictable than the last considering that it is going to be a hectic final year in the DP in addition to the fact that we might return to face to face school as early as November because of improved vaccine rates so really only time can tell but I have created an easily adaptable set of goals for what I want to accomplish in the following year.

Creativity

In the past year I challenged myself with a wide variety of creative activities ranging from running service related social media accounts to writing letters, pursuing recreation photography and so much more while my central focuses were on editing, cooking and baking (which was unexpected but soon evolved into a regular hobby of mine) as well as music, i.e. playing the guitar. In DP1 I also took on the tasks of getting involved in events like the IVY Girls Lead which helped develop my people and leadership skills. In the upcoming year I feel that as a long term goal I plan on spending at least 30 minutes each Saturday and Sunday learning a song on the guitar or alternatively the piano. I can learn how to play the song with Marlon (my guitar teacher), by using YouTube or Ultimate Guitar. On Saturday I can just practice, acquaint myself with the chords etc. and then use the Sunday to really spend some time perfecting it. If I find the piece particularly challenging then I will also use the second week to my advantage as well. In addition to this I feel that it is important to maintain my progress making food especially as college draws nearer. I am rather ecstatic with how far I have come and certainly do not want to fall behind now. I will try and make at least one meal / dish every week from a variety of different cultures so that I can not only make the dish but also learn about its origins. As for editing which was one of my goals last year, I feel as though I cannot keep up at the same frequency in which I did last year, naturally my studies are a bigger priority to me this time around so editing up to 3 times a week seems a bit unrealistic alongside coming up with inspiration, which is why I have decided to do it whenever I feel motivated to do so, because, like Atticus once famously said, “Art takes time – Monet grew his gardens before he painted them.” In addition to these central goals I naturally aim to continue to apply my creative abilities and outlets in other potential areas as well as a form of relaxation.

Activity

While my plans for activity haven’t gone exactly according to plan last year having highly anticipated the ability to train and participate in SAISA and be outdoors for badminton and diving and other previous goals, things last year had to be a lot more spontaneous and adapted to the constantly changing regulations regarding leaving the house. However, that being said this unexpected turn of events also enabled me to do so much more than regular football training including a lot more adventurous endeavors since I’ve had the incredible opportunity to travel to many places within Sri Lanka on vacation during this time. I have gone surfing and hiking and dome more activities which are things that are either entirely new experiences or somewhat outside of my comfort zone while I have also had the ability to maintain my general fitness through means such as home workouts, yoga, biking, football, tennis etc. By the end of this semester I would have liked to accomplish at least three new physical activities that aren’t regular for me hopefully whenever I get the opportunity to go out. Living in Sri Lanka and my Activity blogs for the past year have made me realize how lucky I am to live in a country that offers such amazing outlets for keeping fit and because I enjoy trying new things or just challenging myself in general I look foreword to participating in them. As for general fitness I aim to continue to my regular workouts (perhaps try the Cirque Du Soleil workouts which are known to be extremely strenuous if I feel capable) and I hold myself to continuing my football drills to not lose complete touch with the sport and if the circumstances allow I would also like to do another hike in the upcoming months. An absolute cherry on top would be being able to go diving although I am unsure as of now whether that would be possible given the situation in the country and lastly, if COVID allows, I would like to finally join TAFA a football club outside of school to play in my free time. These physical activities would keep me fit and healthy for the next year.

Service

This school year, I plan on rejoining Hope For Kids as a returning member. This will be my 3rd consecutive year in this service group which I have been in since I first joined OSC and if things go according to plan I would be service leader alongside Saesha this year. Once again a lot of our action depends on the situation here because our levels of interaction with the children we work with are heavily dependent on health and the risks associated with COVID as we would in no way want to put them in danger. Naturally, we did accomplish a lot last year with events ranging from fundraisers to food drives and activity sessions so hopefully we get to continue along this successful streak (while also preferably returning to school) and I hope that I can satisfactorily guide the members of our service group into another productive year :)) Aside from that I will try and make smaller contributions to the community whenever possible as well including within my own home and outside of it while participating in groups like The Margin and Girls RISE once again if they are reinstated in school.

Devanga's CAS Journey

Snapshots from my learning in the IB Creativity, Activity & Service (CAS) program

Category Archives: CAS Goals