Description of the particular activity and goals (100 words)

This activity of arranging service sessions for underprivileged children was organized by Fountainhead School. It was brought up by the school in order to promote caring nature in students and be internationally minded for a better tomorrow. I took this opportunity and platform to make the destitute children learn football as a sport. In a time span of one month, and 6 sessions with those children, I made them learn the basic skills of football, right from how to pass a ball to your partner, to hit a smack shot I made them learn everything.

Learning outcome 1:- “Identify own strengths and develop areas for growth“.  

I started playing football since grade 6. In this journey of 6 years, I have played over 35+ competitions and devoted more than 500 hours of playing football. Thus I developed various skills and abilities which I could teach others. These include, “Passing the ball with great accuracy and precision”, “Sprinting and dribbling with the ball and without the ball”, and lastly “Shooting the ball with great power”. Above my strengths and skills that I discovered in last 6 years, I felt that playing with these kids made me realize my weaknesses too. I realized that I still wasn’t able to shoot the ball on target, even if I had great power and accuracy. Frankly, while teaching those kids I even felt embarrassed at a particular point, where out of 7 kicks I had taken only 2 had managed to reach the specific target which was the goalpost.

Thus, I wrote that point in my personal diary and asked my football coach( Mr. Anwer Hans) to start making me practice kicks on a given target. Secondly, I felt that I lacked management skills a bit while I taught them. Because I being the team leader had to manage more than 50 kids and make sure that each one learns. But on the day of implementation, I couldn’t manage even 10 students and ended up taking help of my partner. Thus I have decided to organize such events more so that I get to experience and develop my management skills.

Overall, It was a great learning experience and I felt happy about the thing that I got to know my weaknesses and how important it was for me to work upon them. I have a goal of playing National level competition thus it was important for me to realize that I lacked precision while shooting.

Learning outcome 3:- “Demonstrate how to initiate and plan a CAS experience”.

This activity was organized by fountainhead school, but we as students had a bigger responsibility in front of us. As a leader of the whole service session, we had to plan the whole syllabus of things to be done in a time span of 1 month. We had to allocate children to seniors, we had to decide on drills, exercises, and game plans to teach the students. While making the plan we really had to consider many aspects like the age group of children, the intensity of the workout, their prior knowledge of the sport and most importantly how enthusiastic are they going to be as a learner.

Thus my partner and I sat down and made an excel sheet, where each session’s agenda was written prior to our sessions. We started off with teaching the basics of football, like passing, shooting, dribbling, and ball control. Later, they were divided into groups and we played matches, did “WHALE drill” so that these footballers are ready for challenges. It was difficult to manage these children in first 2 sessions, but their enthusiasm, smile, and an enjoying nature made us really happy and motivated us to help them even further.

Learning outcome 4:- “Show commitment to and perseverance in CAS experiences”.

It obviously got difficult to commit ourselves for these sessions. I had some of my service sessions at the end of September too, and we had our midterm exams approaching, so taking out two hours from every weekend for this task became a bit difficult for me. Thus had to again replan and make a new timetable for my weekend studies, where I included 2 hours of service. I sacrificed my soccer practice which I used to go and added these 2 hours there. So that nor my studies are missed and neither these wonderful sessions.

On the other hand, when talking about the persistence, I felt I lacked it sometimes and at times it became a bit tedious. The sessions used to be conducted on the weekends so things learned this weekend, the rapport made with the students and bond which was created over two days, was suddenly broken as we next met after 7 days. So small kids usually forgot the drills and techniques and we had to give our first 15 minutes in revising on what all did we do in the last 2 sessions. Secondly, there was a great problem with the attendance of the students. Some used to turn in for the first day and then did not come for the next two sessions. As they weren’t regular with their practice, it became difficult for us to teach them something new, and because of them, others had to suffer too. But one thing that I personally enjoyed while teaching them is their willpower to learn something new at any cost and to give their all efforts just to kick a ball too. It really gave us the motivation to try harder and work harder.

Learning outcome 5:- “Demonstrate the skills and recognize the benefits of working collaboratively”.

The success ratio of this service was heavily depended on the work we did as a team and students working together collaboratively. Without such support from all the fountainhead students, teachers, and staff it would have been next to impossible to manage a task like this. There were over 50 children who were in Football, thus I chose some FS students as leaders and divided children accordingly. Each group was given a specific task and a goal to reach and at the end of the session I used to go to each group and confirm whether things have gone according to the plan or not. My role was a team leader, who used to be on his feet constantly and used to see whether under me are things going right or not. If a student was unaware of how to pass the ball, I made sure I am the first one to reach him and make him learn about such basic concepts. The feeling of responsibility and a leader motivated me to work even harder and make sure everything falls into place. I really liked how students later came and thanked me for being such a good leader and guiding them to teach other children. I felt happy and to be honest proud too.

(We taught them how to dribble the ball, pass, and other fun and football related drills).