CAS: 'We Walk Together' Round Square Conference 2010

The day before the Conference :D

OBJECTIVES

After 2 years of preparation, the conference had finally arrived. It involved 72 Round Square Schools, 5 Community Partner Schools and 800 people. My goals for the conference were to undertake new challenges, work collaboratively with others to perform our steering committee dance successfully, develop new skills and really demonstrate the meaning behind our theme ‘We Walk Together’.

REGISTRATION DAY

The conference lasted for 6 days. The first day was registration day and I was in charge of guiding the girls to their accommodation. This was great because I was able to meet a lot of people on the first day. However, it was very hot and always walking back and forth was very tiring. The biggest challenge was when buses arrived right after each other. When this happened it was very chaotic and everyone who arrived needed help because they didn’t know where to go. I approached this dilemma by staying calm and trying to attend to as many people as I could. I also asked other people to help me to make sure that no one had to wait for too long. From this I learnt new skills regarding how to deal with large groups of people.

OPENING CEREMONY

That night it was the informal opening ceremony and we preformed our steering committee dance that we had been practicing for 9 months. I reached one of my objectives because I worked collaboratively with the rest of the steering committee to plan how we would go on stage how and how we would help each other when someone did not remember their moves. The dance was a huge success and after we were congratulated by an endless number of people.

The opening flag ceremony.

INTERNATIONAL LUNCH

The next part of the conference that I played an important role in was the international lunch that took place the next day. My friend Han Sung and I were emceeing the event which meant again working collaboratively with others. I was a little nervous but because I wanted to be able to undertake new challenges I decided to try my best. As the lunch progressed I grew more and more confident and realized that public speaking is a potential strength of mine. One difficulty I encountered was right before we had to begin people kept coming up to us to make changes to their performances which meant changes to our script. To deal with this I made sure I had correctly written down all the alterations and read through it a couple of times just to become more familiar with my new text. The international lunch was a big success as well.

Me in my Belgian outfit :)

BARAZZA SESSIONS

During the conference I had to lead three one- hour long discussion groups (barazza groups) after a keynote speaker had spoken. I had 2 other leaders to help me however they relied on me to lead it. Barazza leaders had had training on a number of occasions to help us in facilitation a discussion however, I was still unsure if I could facilitate for an hour long. Surprisingly the discussion went very well and I discovered another strength I have. On the other hand I also realized that I would always try to rush through the content so we had it all done, but I learnt that the most important is the responses gained from the people in the group. From these discussion groups I learnt that another one of my aims were reached because all the delegates seemed inspired and passionate about our theme.

The Krathong we made in our Barazza Group to embrace Thai culture.

THE EXPERIENCE

The Conference was an amazing experience. Listening to the inspirational keynote speakers allowed me to become more knowledgeable about the world around me. The most memorable part of the conference was seeing the smiling faces of the children from our community partners and the friendships they formed with the delegates. When the conference was over and I witnessed the goodbyes between the delegates and children from the hill tribe, it made me feel as though being part of making this conference happen was truly a significant act.