I conducted activities on the hindi bhasha divas to promote our native language which is nowadays have been highly sidelined. People think that speaking in Hindi leads to a bad image and is a symbol of illiteracy. Basically, people, mainly millennials, are becoming embarrassed of speaking in Hindi. To cater to this issue, I, along with a friend, organized pictionary for the students. The aim was to promote hindi language while also making it fun.
Learning Outcomes.
LO1: During the course of this experience, I identified some of my strengths and weaknesses. I found that I am good at managing a bunch of students and planning an activity that is enjoyable by both students and teachers. One thing I need to further work upon is my fluency in Hindi. During the event as well, I was sometimes fumbling while speaking and also used some english words. If I would have overcome this weakness before the event, I could have had an even greater impact on the audience. However, knowing my weaknesses helped my develope in Hindi as a subject, and now I am finding hindi fairly simpler than I used to before.
LO2: As this event was completely online, it was very difficult for me to gain my audience’s attention and engross them into the activity, adding to it, I had a mixed age group audience, hence making the event enjoyable for all them was difficult. I embraced this challenge by planning such an activity that would be enjoyed by both adults and children and is previously played by them. The activity I chose was pictionary and it was a great success. Another challenge with this activity was to adapt to online platforms. I had to learn to use online drawing tools myself so that I could show it to the audience. Undertaking this challenge was a tough task, but when I saw the happy faces of my audience, I thought of the hard work to be worth it. It is very important for us to take new challenges to develop as an individual
LO3: Planning was really important in this CAS experience because we had to make Hindi ‘interesting’ through our activities. I had to organize all the things such as what tool I’ll be using for online pictionary, the idioms I’ll use for it, make sure that the idioms were such that one could draw and make them understand. I also had to set the timings with other participants who had their different activities ready. All these tasks required prior planning. After completing this experience successfully, planning anything in the future will be easy. It is very important for us to plan things out before doing any task, if we plan, then we tend not to procrastinate and finish our task on time.
LO5: During the course of this experience, I was working with one friend as a group. Although we were just two of us, teamwork was needed thoroughly. We identified our strengths and weaknesses and divided the tasks accordingly. This made my experience very smooth. Although, there were some instances where my partner was not able to complete his task due to some reasons, so at that time I used to complete it. I avoided any kind of conflict and that is something that made the process so undisturbed. I showed leadership qualities here, because if I would have not understood my teammate’s problem but would have act in an inappropriate way such as to leave the task on him, then ultimately our activity would have suffered. It is very important to learn to work as a team because some tasks may take up a lot of time if done on our own.
LO6: Unable to preserve cultures is quite a significant global issue. People are moving away from their cultural roots due to this extremely globalised world. For example, people in India are refraining from speaking hindi when in parties, or at a restaurant, or anywhere in the public. I have noticed it firsthand. The reason behind such an action is embarrassment. Hindi has became a symbol for illiteracy, those who speak hindi in high-end public areas are often considered as an illilterade person. However, to bring people back to their roots is very important and hence from this experience I aim to do the same. It is very important for individuals to know about global issues. Knowing them makes us want to try and resolve them, knowing them makes us a bit less ignorant about them. I feel really informed due to the fact that I am able to make out this global issue. I feel like helping to resolve this issue by taking the necessary actions.
How is this experience a service to the community?
This experience might not directly connect as a service because there is no kind of donation involved, no cleaning the beaches, no teaching students, and other ‘typical’ service. However, this experience is beyond the above discussed services. Hindi Bhasha divas helps make promote Hindi language and make it fun for students to learn, I am doing a service to the society by helping save Hindi and preserve our culture. The experience has sowed the seeds in our young audiences and the seed will soon ripen into the tree of knowledge.
Final takeaways
The learner profiles I developed were communicator and thinker. To hold such an event requires a lot communication with my teammate, other participants, and most importantly: the audience. Just communicating with the audience was not enough, I needed to think of ways in which I could make it the activity interesting and fun, thus leading me to think creatively to come up with such an activity . The activity has helped others by making Hindi subject interesting for them. And after completing this activity, I got a serious sense of accomplishment. My contributions to the society does not end with this activity, I will further help to promote hindi by not refraining to converse in hindi in public places, and also urge others to do so.
Evidences
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1nDJ5APOwpHiG7XC4Oig5iaK10LnGmzKv?usp=sharing
This is the recordings of the meetings we had to plan out the event.