Description:

I have always had a hidden passion for gardening which I was not truly able to give time to, but I made sure I took care of the plants at home and helped my mom with this stuff. This CAS experience is a chance for me to help me follow this passion of mine of gardening and help it turn into community service. After lockdown due to unemployment or fear restriction people have stepped out less, and due to ongoing development work and rapid urbanization trees and greenery has been lost. So I thought that we should grow Tulsi as itś the most common plant available and it is really beneficial as 20 hours it gives out Oxygen and the other 4 hours removes other harmful toxins from air. Moreoveras Tulsi is an indoor plant nowadays the chances of itś seed getting germinated have already decreased so this will even help the plant release itś pollens. So now in this experience I have gathered my building friends and with our group’s effort we have germinated Tulsi at many parts in our area.

Learning Outcomes:

LO1 – Identify own strengths and develop areas for growth

I am really good as a leader and a person who can get the work done from my peers. So I thought of leading my building friends and motivating them to join me so that we together can help my residential surroundings be more green. Other than I don´t know much about how to plant trees from seeds or how to cultivate seeds, so I knew that was going to be our group’s biggest weakness. But knowing our weaknesses in the start helped us plan out and we accordingly through our internet research understood how to grow holy basil from itś seeds.

LO2 – Demonstrate that challenges have been undertaken, developing new skills in the process

The task was really challenging as getting others to get their work done, then growing plants is a tough job as maintenance is the key to success over here. We had to make sure that for sometime we had to water those areas so that those seeds could germinate. And moreover none of us in the group ever has had an experience to go out full fledged planting, so as this was new for us it was although more of a challenge for us. But we came through all the hardships and we have been successful in laying out seeds at many areas in our surrounding. It as a group felt very good knowing that we had done something for the environment, so we felt very proud in successfully carrying out this task. Other than this I guess challenges only made this task rewarding and entertaining as without challenges I guess the reward wouldn’t be that sweet that it is like today after overcoming these challenges.

LO3 – Demonstrate how to initiate and plan a CAS experience

I am not an organized person, rather I am someone who is a procrastinator so initiating and making my group follow the plan would be a little easy compared to making myself follow the plan. This required some initial meeting with my friends, where I discussed the idea with them and based on each one’s free timing we decided that together that we had to do something so we will, and then we all followed a schedule and now the goal has been achieved. Planning will be a lot easier now for my other tasks in life as this experience I guess was a tough job so I definitely feel planning would be easy later on in life. Other than that I discovered myself to be more passionate about gardening and I discovered that I could be very good at gardening as well.

LO4 – Show commitment to and perseverance in CAS experiences

Germination is although very hard to happen at first place, and if we as a group had not maintained our commitment to this project the germination chance would have not occurred only as maintenance of seeds is a very hard process. Other than that we as a group find it more hard to be committed as finding common free timings was hard, so we had to definitely divide the task. Commitment I think is really needed for all tasks as commitment brings quality and a lot of time being saved, so I guess commitment is something that is like salt to food.

LO5 – Demonstrate the skills and recognize the benefits of working collaboratively

Working with others is a difficult process for me, as I am not that committed myself and I believe in my ideas definitely more than what others say so I guess listening skills are weak to me. But as these were my friends the collaboration part was a little easy, and I guess getting the tasks done from other is a challenge and even giving respect to others to important for which I allowed other to freely speak about whatever ideas they wanted to have included in this project or some time changes they want, so I tried to maintain transparency which I guess helped me collaborate effectively. Sowing seeds is not a one man job, so the group was really required over here as this reduced a lot of load from my shoulders and not only this the group efforts and ideas helped us complete this project in a better way.

LO6 – Demonstrate engagement with issues of global significance

The global issue which is climate change is caused due to many factors like urbanization and deforestation and these were even issues we were facing in my surrounding and that is what drive me to do this experience as I wanted to breath clean, as due to the construction works, trees were not been taken care off, trees were being removed for creating parking spaces and all this made the air worse. If we see the Surat Air quality index today, itś pathetic from what it was like 2 or 3 years ago. But driving this change has helped me feel proud about myself and helps me know that I am an active citizen who is ready to put in efforts for his community.

LO7 – Recognize and consider the ethics of choices and actions

The implications of this activity were that Tulsi or any other plant when grown together disrupts the soil quality but I think that was a step that did some harm but considering the positive externalities of planting Tulsi at the first place is greater than the soil quality externality caused. So this was something that we were dicey about but then we had to give up on this for the greater good. In addition to this we used fertilizers but organic ones as to do less harm to the land. Knowing about this fact makes the reward taste bitter sweet since we know some of the consequences as well, but I guess we are still happy on what we have have accomplished and we are sure that the soil quality damage cause by Tulsi is far less than covering the soil with concrete or dumping construction work waste in the soul.

Final Takeaways:

I became a caring person, through this activity as I learned how to take care of the future generation, environment and my surroundings through this activity, not only this my team management skills and synergy has definitely improved after this activity. Moreover we as a group felt that next time we come with this sort of activity which should ensure diversity in plants seed sown, as that would make the reward more better than only planting one type of seeds. We as a group surely felt we were successful with this experience and it just made us feel inner good as we knew at the end of the day we had contributed efforts to reduce climate change.