Final Essay - CASL

As a participant of CASL at the International School of Kenya I have participated in several different forms of activities (sevice, action, creativity.) All of these activities have increased my overall awareness of my own strengths and weaknesses.

Firstly, the main section of my CASL that I focused on was the creativity aspect. I am co-head of Artsco a club at my school that raises awareness about the arts (music, drama, art) and organizes service/fundraising events. In this club I participated in several activities including mural painting in Kibera, and organizing the high school talent show! Being part of Artsco allowed me to work on my team skills, improve my organizational skills and become a leader. After being co-president of Artsco I can clearly see that I am able to be in charge of such a club successfully even if it takes a lot of work and commitment. Artsco taught me how to commit to something and stick to it and brought out my passion for the arts.

Secondly, for the action aspect of my CASL, I participated in the varsity volleyball team as well as working out by myself at the gym twice a week. Both these activities were a good experience and kept me in shape throughout the year. Once again I learnt to commit to something that is good for me. Committing to both these activities allowed me to stay in shape and do something weekly that I enjoy. Committing to the action part of this process was very difficult as I often was too lazy to exercise and go to the gym, however perseverance taught me that I can commit if I have the right mind set.

Thirdly, I get to the part of CASL that I enjoyed the most. I enjoyed the service aspect of the CASL project because it was easy to integrate with the creativity aspect. Since Artsco is a club that also organizes service events it was easy to dedicate my time to service projects. For example I helped organize a service trip to Kibera slum where I helped paint murals on drug awareness. Another service project that I dedicated my time to was donating clothes to local orphanages which I did at least three times this school year. Even though this activity was not linked to creativity it still taught me to appreciate what I have and give to people that are in need. After working so hard on service projects I will try not to take what I have for granted and think of others.

CASL is a project that I enjoyed and think is a good way to make a student participate in different areas (creative, action, service) while they are in high school. It is definitely a project I will remember in the future.

Face Painting During ISSEA

This Saturday at ISK ARTSCO offered face painting to players and team supporters during the final ISSEA matches. We offered face painting that costed 50 shillings per person. I really enjoyed painting different team mascots on different supporters and it was a fun day! :)

Fringe Festival Ushering!

During the IB fringe festival, I ushered several different plays for two nights (Thursday/Friday) As head of ARTSCO I was in charge of finding volunteers and positioning them at different plays. I think that this event ran smoothly and it was a great experience to be able to watch all the different plays as well. It was definitely time well spent. :)

Talent Show!

The Artsco talent show was a huge success! I think that the show went very well and now that it's over I can finally breathe a huge breath of relief. The show ran for about three hours with a ten minute intermission and everyone seemed very pleased with the turn out. We raised almost 100,000 from selling tickets. The raised money will go to the artsco account

Organizing the Talent Show

This October, Artsco has been working towards organizing the high school talent show. So far we have held three auditions and are having a dress rehearsal on Wednesday for the show. This has been very stressful to do since there is so much work and planning that goes into organizing such a big event. The show will last around two hours and hopefully it will run smoothly without any complications :)

FINAL REFLECTION:

Our objectives for this project was to organize ISK's high school talent show. It was a great success as we raised over 100,000 shillings! I was very pleased with the outcome of the show as it was a very stressful process. However all presidents of the talent show overcame this stress by working together :) This event definitely improved my event organizing skills and this could be handy in the future.

Second Kibera Mural

We went back to the SODAS foundation to paint another mural inside their compound. This time Artsco decided to symbolize how drug addicts can evolve and break free by getting clean. We used a butterfly hatching from a cocoon idea as a metaphor to symbolize the general idea. Our plan was to make this mural happy and bright to symbolize how change is a good thing. This experience was fun and I think everyone had a good time. We are very pleased with how this mural turned out and would love to be part of another service project like this again.

Kibera Mural Painting!

One of our first Artsco projects was a mural for an organization called SODAS (Save Our Daughters and Sons.) The organization is located in Kibera slums and we were asked to create a mural that raised awareness about drugs and HIV aids. Our idea for the actual mural was based on the idea of good and bad people. The bad people portrayed in the mural were all drug addicts and were colored in grey and black while the good people were all well off people that were painted in colorful colors. The main theme of the mural was that those who don't do drugs achieve more in life and are more successful. Overall this was a fun activity and it was great to see all the Artsco members participating and helping out. I think that the mural turned out to be well done and that this project was a good idea!