CAS especially throughout the last 2 years of my school life and time at OSC has been ever so important not only academically, but as the name suggests, in terms of my creative, active and service life. It allowed me to document majority of the service based acts I conducted, and also the many creative and active projects I took part in of which I would have already forgotten if not for my CAS posts.

 

Starting off with my creative aspects during the last two years. Participating in COMUN was a key feature of my creative section as I served as the Head of Technology for the COMUN conference and we had to overlook much of the technological sides of the conference. This included handling the website, creating videos for the conference, setting up live streams, taking pictures and also designing certificates and medals. Although much of the work was split up among 4 people, the work that was assigned to us was often tedious and had to be completed while we had school work as well. Nevertheless the experiences gathered from all 4 conferences I attended and the new people I met was all worth it. Throughout my COMUN career I experienced all the learning outcomes except LO7. We see that LO1 was experienced  where I talked about the Delegate Workshop in my previous posts, where I had to set up all the camera gear and the mics which was something new to me. This allowed me to learn a lot about cinematography and allowed me to grow in that area. Next LO2 and LO3 was experienced throughout this whole process because I undertook challenges to set up everything technologically for the conference and I learned how to plan and initiate the whole tech process with my team. LO4 was demonstrated as COMUN took place every tuesday starting about 3-4 months prior to the conference date but also I had to commit to doing the extra work that I had to do to prepare for the conference. COMUN being all student planned, it taught me how to work with people to get things done methodically whilst working with multiple people (LO5). Lastly LO6 engaged me with many global issues in the sense that, we were exposed to these global issues whilst working for COMUN and making the videos for each of the committees.

 

Moving onto service, although I had a tumultuous time with service during the last 2 years with my main service group CheckMates closing down, and then moving to RCCI, which then eventually closed down and now finally finishing at Gecko Inc. I made sure to always give 100% in service, because it truly helped people in need. My time at Checkmates was cut short due to not much people joining the service which meant that we had to close it down, the same was true with RCCI. In all three service groups I served at the service leader with another colleague of mine, and we had to come up with plans for when the students could come in every thursday as during the past two years, no students were allowed to come onto campus for service. Even though RCCI isn’t my main service and I did the service called Checkmates I was willing to work hard for RCCI. There were many learning outcomes that I accomplished during this process, to state it shortly they were, LO2 which is demonstrating that I have undertaken challenges. Some of these challenges were planning out all 12 lessons with the rest of my peers over zoom. But also planning the podcast. Another learning outcome that I used was LO3 and LO4 which is demonstrating how to initiate and plan a CAS experience and showing commitment to and perseverance in CAS experiences. I would like to think that planning out the lessons and the podcast is like a CAS experience as it involves many of the learning outcomes but also helps you with many of the real world circumstances like planning things out. I think also another learning outcome that we accomplished was LO5 demonstrating the skills and recognise the benefits of working collaboratively as essentially the whole planning process was done with other peers, and especially doing it over zoom really made it harder to work together. Lastly and most importantly LO6 was seen everywhere during this process as this learning outcome is, demonstrating engagement with issues of global significance. The idea of disabilities and spreading awareness about them is on global significance and planning podcast about these ideas is demonstrating engagement with issues of global significance. Also LO6 was seen in Gecko Inc with the engagement to issues of global significance especially because our service description is, “The Gecko Inc. service group focuses on helping disadvantaged Sri Lankan children to develop basic water safety skills. Considering the fact that Sri Lanka is an island, a child’s ability to feel safe around water is critical to preventing drownings.” As it is a big problem in Sri Lanka and also around the world especially in countries surrounded by water or contain a lot of water bodies this signifies the global significance. Outside of School, I also took part in working for a nonprofit NGO called The Online Foundation in which I made videos and posters to promote the NGO and help children gain access to technology to help them with their education.

 

Finally, with activity throughout the past 2 years, I feel that I could have documented more activity on this blog because I had been going to the gym everyday to fill the void of SAISA sports being cancelled. However I was able to still document small runs I’ve been going on during the lockdown period in Sri Lanka, and I was also able to document one of my gym sessions in an earlier post. I think that physical activity during the lockdown especially helped a lot with mental health with the school being closed. LO4 and LO2 were especially important because I had to stay committed to reap the results of going to the gym, but also I undertook challenges and had to stay determined to keep going to the gym everyday.

 

Overall, I think that this CAS journey definitely positively impacted my last two years of school at OSC and pushed me to document more of what I did of service, creativity and activity. It not only directly helped me with my academics but also indirectly helped me especially with activity and service. The last two years of CAS has been a great experience, and I would instantly do it all again in a heartbeat.