With an aim to learn various skills I wanted to organize an event on a great scale which would give me exposure to various necessary skills.
Learning Outcomes
- LO1: Identify own strengths and develop areas for growth
- LO2: Demonstrate that challenges have been undertaken developing new skills
- LO3: Initiate and plan a CAS experience
- LO4: Commitment to and perseverance
- LO5: Demonstrate the skills and benefits of working collaboratively
For doing something big, you require a team and I found that team in our school itself. Me and 4 of my other friends came together and at first instance, we brainstormed ideas as to how will we deliver our aim and thought on the activity we will conduct. After trying a number of times we contacted an event manager (Neel Choksi) as he would have a greater experience in the event field and would guide us throughout. After some meetings, we decided to be event partners i.e. both (Event management team and us) would have an equal share of the profit as well as lose if incurred, we decided on a 60 to 40 percent ration where we claimed to have the 60 percent of the total amount. Later the 60 percent was further divided into 5 equal parts and each one of us shared an equal profit percent. In the beginning, we had to decide the genre of the show we were going to organize and after brainstorming we came to a concession, looking at growing industry of comedy events, we decided to organize a standup comedy show. We wanted to do something extraordinary that no one has ever done before in Surat, so we decided to conduct a Gujarati stand up comedy show as this is something everyone was waiting for and was never experienced by the audience in Surat. This was a huge risk that we took as none of us were sure about the success of this event. Soon after deciding we booked the artist and finalized the dates and had to give an advance amount of 1 lakh rupees, Each one invested a capital amount of 10,000 and the rest was invested by Neel. Then we were asked to work on the budgeting and had to create a complete budget in a few days so that we can work on the sponsorship PPT and start finding people interested in sponsoring the event. At first communicating within each other and with Neel was an issue but after some meetings, things became a little casual. Pitching people for sponsorship was a great deal because most of us lacked the skill and didn’t ever face rejection on the first go, but sticking to the task helped us attract enough sponsors which would help us cover the entire cost. For the final day, each one of us was assigned a task so that we could benefit from working collaboratively, I had to look after the activity in the box office as well as the main entry gate. On the day of the event, we had everything at place and everything was going as we planned. We could see smiles on peoples face throughout the event which made us feel very proud of ourselves as this event was not something that could be done by anyone, it included various risks, dedication, hard work, and commitment. Throughout the process, I came across many skills that I discovered in myself and skills like communication, time management, etc were developed.
This CAS experience gave me a gist of what real hard work is and made me realize the value of money. This experience has a major influence on my life as it not only taught me the extrinsic values but also the intrinsic values which I believe are very essential in life.
Link to the Sponsors List:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1E1TptZ5_EQSHw76FgoUF7iG5KgKABfu7zCmJ6Tc95iI/edit#gid=108854912
Link to the Letterhead:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1B6D2apVqnLItUoRn16XJDsylWJJxQq21SkXYGLbgcE8/edit
