The Challenge

Throughout the last three weeks of July and the whole of September I have been doing the NCS Challenge. It consisted of four challenges that would take place throughout these two months: The Personal Challenge, The Team Challenge, The Real Challenge Design and The Real Challenge Action. The first challenge was The Personal Challenge. It involved staying at an outdoors centre in Wales and taking part in amazing activities like hiking, rock-climbing, gorge walking, raft building and camping. I'm not sure if I feel more accomplished by having done these activities or for having survived the seven hour bus rides from and to London. I stayed in a cabin with my team, Team Perham, and another team. The participants of Merton, Richmond and Kingston were divided into four groups named after outstanding young individuals, my team was named after Michael Perham, a seventeen year old who sailed the world solo. The next week came The Team Challenge where I spent the week developing skills in drama, enterprise, music, photography or sport which I would then use to help a local community group before presenting my work at the end of the week. I chose to do sport. We were learning how to coach basketball for three days and were being coached by a man more than two metres tall! we learned how to plan sessions, in technical, physical, fun and objective ways. We learned about what makes a good leader, the types of community groups (primary school, secondary school, elderly groups, care homes, disability groups) and considerations to them and also about team building games. At the end of the week we did the Community Visit where I experienced working alongside some primary school children with my team mates. Then came the Presentation Day where I spent a whole day learning how to structure my ideas and how to present them and we presented our week to the rest of the teams and parents. Then  came the Real Challenge Design where we planned a campaign idea for the local community to change it for the better. I had to manage a budget, set targets and work out the logistics necessary as at the end of the week, we didn't just have to present it to teams and parents, we also had to present it to a panel of 'Dragons' in the style of Dragons' Den so that they could decide whether they wanted to fund our budget or not and give us feedback about our ideas. During this week I also did a second Community Visit to the the Kingston Orchard Project which is an allotted piece of land that is aimed to be made to resemble a forest garden for temperate climates. We were there for one day and we were given tasks such as clearing areas of weeds, trimming branches, planting, collecting soil, etc. I was given the task, along with three of my friends, to 'refurbish' the green house. It consisted of a wooden structure of about six by four metres and 4 metres tall, covered in plastic sheets. We had to take of the plastic to put a new one on, and replace some of the wooden structure. Seems simple, but between us four girls it took quite a while. After we finished we joined the others to continue cutting weeds and digging. After the Real Challenge Design we went to have our Summer holidays and then came September where we did the next and final step: The Real Challenge Action. This is where everything we had done came together. Team Perham met every September weekend to deliver our projects. I was involved in a number of social action projects to improve the community, raised money for a local charity (The Kingston Orchard Project), delivered practical projects to improve the local area and delivering my own campaign. Our campaign was called Share A Connection. The basis was to increase the amount of happiness in the area, inspired by a man called Juan Mann (pronounced 'one man') who began by holding a sign saying FREE HUGS and created a movement that went viral and even I have seen in places like Picadilly Circus, Leister Square and Oxford Street. I really liked the idea of making people happy and proposed that we did something based on that. We developed the idea of our campaign: Share A Connection based on the idea of sharing the happiest experience of your life. We set up a table where people would go and write their experiences on large posters and receive stickers, wristbands, and badges, and we also set up an area where we had large bass speakers and some friends and I doing street dance, all by the falling over telephone boxes in Kingston. The campaign was a total success, we had two large boards filled with the happiest experiences of people's lives and had made many people smile with the public music and dancing. throughout one of the weekend days we also completed the Challenge 100. This was where we were
given a list of 100 things to do throughout the day and we had to complete them, similar to a scavenger hunt, but with actions and places rather than objects. All of these experiences were useful for CAS because I had increased my awareness of my own strengths and areas for growth and undertaken new challenges throughout the whole thing, not only physical, but also mental challenges. I had also planned and initiated activities like the campaign and worked collaboratively with others throughout the whole time either as a team member or as a leader when required. I showed perseverance and commitment as I attended all of the days and was enthusiastic throughout. Within the Real Challenge Design and Action weeks I engaged with issues of global importance and considered the ethical implications of my actions. I developed new physical, personal, presentational, organisation, public speaking skills and became an inquirer, knowledgeable, a thinker, a communicator, principled, open-minded, caring, a risk-taker, balanced, reflective.

My aims for this activity were to experience a week out in the country with the wildlife doing outdoor activities which were both new for me and improvement. I also wanted to see what it was like to experience a week living at a university, living independently and with my teammates whilst learning to teach and practice certain sports like basketball, volleyball or football. Finally, I wanted to successfully complete the campaign to raise awareness about the issue of depression and make people happy.

Challenge is the very name of this activity because it features in every second of doing it. This activity was a challenge for me because of how it was structured in short intensive periods of activity. the first week was very physically challenging as we did many activities which were new to me like rock climbing on a real mountain, raft making or gauge walking. The second week was also very challenging both physically and in my skills because I had to learn how to teach sports that I had never done before to small children and had to be very aware of the difficulty level which I was teaching to make sure that it matched the age group and consider all aspects of the group I was teaching. The final part of the Challenge was also very challenging in every aspect because I had to lead a process of thought, development and presentation of a campaign which supported the spread of happiness in our society.

This activity was Creative throughout it entirety, for example, the first week we had small competitions where we had to represent our teams by creating choreographies, singing and putting on small plays. The second week we took turns within the team to cook whilst living in the university or to come up with creative ways to teach sports. the third week was especially creative because we had to develop ideas to present our campaign and make it exciting for the public in many ways like having a stall which attracted people and making an area with music where we had dancers and did flash mobs.

Ultimately this activity fits CAS in every single aspect and has enriched me as a person in many different ways. I have developed my physical skills whilst learning to be in a team and trust people whilst also supporting them. It particularly enhanced my leadership skills as I took place in the role of a leader many times throughout the Challenge and even if I wasn't a dedicated leader, I could work within the team and help to organise or lead if I saw that the dedicated leader needed help just because it came naturally to me.

Completing Gold Duke of Edinburgh Award

Whilst I was on The Challenge, during the first week of activity in Wales, I was able to complete my Gold Duke of Edinburgh award. The Challenge gave me the option of whether I wanted to do the award whilst on the trip and I accepted as I have already completed my Bronze and Silver awards previously. It comprised a series of activities which had to fulfill the Physical, Voluntary and Skills aspects of the award, similarly to the IB CAS program. My Physical section included rock climbing, mountain climbing, camping, gauge walking, playing a variety of sports (basketball, tennis, football, etc.) and others throughout the course of two weeks. My Skills section included taking leadership of my group, organisation, setting up camps, encouragement and others. And my voluntary section involved creating a campaign for a charitable cause and helping out in a nursery. This is useful for CAS because I increased my awareness of my own strengths and areas for growth with the activities that we did and undertook new challenges through these activities. I planned and initiated activities by being leader of the team and also worked collaboratively with others when having to complete team challenges and I showed perseverance and commitment to do these. I had also engage with issues of global importance by volunteering for a community visit in some allotments and also considered the ethical implications of my actions like helping the environment and raising money for this cause. I also developed my existing and new skills throughout the D of E and became an inquirer, knowledgeable, a thinker, a communicator, principled, open-minded, caring, a risk-taker, balanced, reflective.

This was challenging for me because each and every one of the activities were mostly new to me and I was constantly forced to make quick decisions and to solve problems as a leader of the team. I had never done such an intensive amount of physical activities,

My Goals and Aims were to complete the Gold Duke of Edinburgh Award and enjoy myself whilst learning new skills and meeting new people whilst going camping and reaching the top of my first mountain: Mount Idris (Cadair Idris), a popular site for mountain climbers and walkers in Wales which was said to have been used by a giant as an armchair to gaze at the stars ('cadair' meaning chair and 'Idris being the Giant's name)

This is Creative because throughout the different activities, especially whilst designing the charity campaign, I had to use creativity and imagination for problem solving and getting ideas. It was also Action because I did many physical activities during the expedition and other sections that I had to complete like Skills. This was also Service because I helped others to fulfill the activities, taught sports to children, did fundraising and prepared a campaign to do this.

High Ashurst

For this activity the IB class went on a trip to an outdoors activity centre called High Ashurst. On our arrival we all had to stand on a bench and do several team working activities making sure to not fall off in the process. We were then divided into two groups and we did a number of obstacle activities where we had to work in our team to absolve these. It involved a number of activities, for example, the one I liked the most was where we had to work in a team to cross between two platforms connected by tight ropes, with only our brains and one rope. After doing the activities we were given the task of making a fire solely from nature (well, nearly). I was shown which type of wood to collect to burn and were given a demonstration, then it was all down to us. I was in a group of three so after we had collected enough twigs to burn we made a fire! And were the first to get it going! After a few attempts we were finally able to create a fire and toast cheese bread over it. We had to make a cheese bread dough and then wrap it around a stick, which i personally didn't mind, what doesn't kill you makes you stronger! After our cheese bread break, we were taught how to saw wood properly. First with a partner and then by ourselves, we cut wood slices with which we later made small decorations, by drilling some holes into them and adding wool. The planned activity was to do two days and one night at this centre, however I was not able to stay for the night and the next day as I had to go on one of The Challenge weekends that Saturday. This was useful for CAS because by doing the activities I had increased my awareness of my own strengths such as my physical abilities like balance, speed and working in a team and areas for growth, one of which was sawing w

ood which I found difficult because I had never done it before. All of the non-physical activities that I had undertaken were new challenges for me. I was able to work collaboratively with others during all of the team working activities and I was able to take leadership when needed and enjoyed doing all of the activities which shows perseverance and commitment. I had developed new skills in fire making and sawing wood and found that throughout the whole day I became an inquirer, a thinker, a communicator, principled, caring, risk-taking, balanced.

Being at High Ashurst was challenging for me because a lot of the things which we did throughout the day were new to me. Although I am used to doing physical activities, they were all different to usual exercise in the sense that it was like an obstacle course which involved finding solutions and ways to overcome the obstacles. In addition, I had never made fire from scratch before and it took a few attempts and piles of sticks before I got the hang of exactly how to spark the fire and keep it going. Also, sawing the pieces of wood from the branch was a challenge because I had never done it before and hence I was completely new to it.
      
My main aim throughout the day was to get to know all of my IB cohorts better as I was only one week into school and only knew a few people who were internal to the school like me. I was also aiming to develop my precision, flexibility, and strength throughout the obstacle activities, learn how to make a fire from natural resources and  learn how to saw a branch and make a decoration from this.

This activity was creative because I had to work together with others to find ways to overcome the obstacles and had to use imagination and logic in order to do so quickly and efficiently. I also used my creativity by making the decoration from the sawn piece of the branch by using different coloured wool and weaving it around the piece. the activity was also action because the outdoors obstacle course required a lot of physical activity, swinging from ropes, balancing on a wire and with the whole group on different platforms, climbing a wall, and many other activities similar to these.

I feel that I really had a lot of fun working with my IB peers throughout the entirety of the course. I feel that I have progressed in getting to know all of my peers better and developing our friendships and trust through the day at High Ashurst. Although I was confident about doing the activities I think I didn't feel fully confident until we were further into the day having gotten to know my everybody better and doing the relationship-building activities. ultimately, I feel that I have achieved all of my aims throughout the activity and really loved the experience of getting to know my peers in this way. I would have loved to do the whole of the activity, sleeping in the teepees and doing high ropes, but unfortunately i couldn't. I would love to do this activity again and stay fr the whole weekend, i enjoyed all of the activities and everyone I was doing them with.