Report of 1dI’s first project in Kathmandu – ‘1˚ of Volunteerism’
The first project of 1dI’s Branch in Nepal was named “1˚ of Volunteerism”. With 8 members in the team, this project kicked off on 4th of July. This was a month long project/event consisting of various activities for high school students from 7 different high schools in Nepal. The main motive of this project was to promote volunteerism amongst high school students. To give them an incentive, this program was prepared in a competition format where each team was judged according to their leadership, team coordination and punctuality. The winner would be given the tag of the 1st Inter-school community service competition – Champions!
The weeks were divided as follows:
Week 1 – Briefing and exchange session with 2 representatives from each high school. This was a very productive session where we talked about various projects that we can carry out. We also discussed on this particular project and its importance. There were 2 presentations made during the session: one by Abhinav, Coordinator of Kathmandu branch, on our first project, second was a presentation on how to build team work and leadership. The session ended with question answers between the members and participants from these high schools.
Week 2 – Cleaning various areas around Kathmandu City.Kathmandu, as most developing cities, is a dirty place and the streets are terribly managed. Therefore we decided to clean various areas around Kathmandu city. These areas included the Basantpur area – a major tourist hotspot, Maitighar mandala,Guheswori,Pashupatinath,Nag Pokhari,Bhotayeti and Patan area. The youngsters cleaned with much enthusiasm and inspired many members of 1dI itself. At the end of the day, the main reason for this cleaning campaign was to give all these youngsters an idea of how difficult it is to clean than just blaming the ones who clean this everyday. Most students were very excited and wanted to clean again if given a chance.
Week 3 – Reviewing on the work done in week 2.This was a day when all these youngsters reviewed with their entire team on what they had done the week before. They were asked to do 3 tasks: prepare a presentation on that given area, identifying the problems and suggesting a solution, prepare a small activity based on the idea ‘if the world ended today and only your group survived, how would your group build a new world?’ and finally a song that would promote love and peace in the world. They worked really hard on this week and spent hours preparing the reports and other activities.
Week 4 – This was the final week of the 1st project. On this day, we invited a youth worker, Mr.Pukar Malla. He’s a person who’s graduated from Swathmore, Silicon Valley and is currently studying in Harvard University. An amazing personality, with quite a charming character. Also in the guest list were the Principals from all the participating high school. The program commenced on 2 Pm sharp with an opening performance by the members of 1dI on the Song “Heal the World” by Micheal Jackson. Following the song, was a welcome speech by the Coordinator of Kathmandu – Abhinav Khanal.After the speech were presentations, drama and songs. Later the winner to this competition was announced and it was Thames College that took the tittle.There were other awards too, like the award for best leader which went to Kundan Pathak of Chelsea International Academy, Best report presentation which went to Rato Bangala School, best drama which also went to Rato Bangala School and best song, which went to Chelsea International Academy.
This was a brief summary on what happened in the 1st project of 1dI.It was quite a successful project according to most guests, however we did make some mistakes and we learned a lot from our mistakes. We did get some media coverage from three local newspapers – The Himalayan Times, The Kathmandu Post and Kantipur.As this was our first project, we think we were able to stick to the motto of bring small changes by promoting volunteerism amongst some, if not all, students!
