Preparations

It had been close to a year since the last time we had interacted with the RCCI kids. Our service group decided to take on the initiative of organizing an online Zoom session with the kids. Planning for this session took a couple of weeks as it required a lot of brainstorming and coordination with the Head Teacher to organize a time. After a couple of emails back and forth a date was finally confirmed. The next stage was for our service group to come up with an activity for the session. It was difficult to come up with an idea because there is not much that you can do online. We finally settled on doing an Art Day where we give them a theme to draw to such as nature or city. These themes are quite broad which allows them to be as creative as they like. We also had to send out an email to the RCCI teachers for them to get the necessary materials like pencils and paper. Our final stage of the preparations was assigning roles. There were a couple of different roles such as translating and host. But I was assigned to get screenshots along side Ben and Karven.

The Session

At around 3:30, the kids and RCCI teachers slowly started to join the Zoom call. We began the session with a short introductory presentation about what we will be doing and why we are doing this. Once everyone got an understanding of the Art tasks, we split up into breakout groups. In my breakout room, I had one of the kids. I began by introducing myself and the theme for the drawing. But there must have been a language barrier as they were not responding. I did not even know if they were drawing or not. I tried my best to communicate with them but I understood that being online must have been difficult for them. After spending some time with them, the breakout rooms closed and we were all back in the main session.

Back in the main session, we decided to draw all together in one big group instead of a couple people in breakout rooms. This turned out to work much better as everyone was more engaged. After spending 20 minutes drawing, we turned on our cameras to share our art. I was personally very impressed with some of the drawings as some of them had a lot of detail. Being able to see everyone’s hard work on their drawings was amazing to see.

Learning Outcomes

Through this activity I engaged with LO6, demonstrating engagement with issues of global significance. Our service group based on interacting with kids have communication disabilities such as autism and down syndrome. These types of disabilities are a major issue that impacts many people across the globe. This virtual art day was a form of us communicating and engaging with the kids that have these types of disabilities.

Another learning outcome that was achieved through this session was LO3, demonstrating how to initiate and plan a CAS experience. This virtual art day was initiated and planned by the service members. This type of online activity has never been done before in RCCI so it meant that there was nothing guiding us. We took it upon ourselves to organize and plan for this virtual art day with very little aid from adults. When in the call, we were also the ones who were in charge. This virtual art day was planned and imitated by the service members with barely any guidance.