A Postcard from Hyderabad Public School: Acts of Kindness

Posted: 25 November 2021

Overview:

Hyderabad Public School, Begumpet, India hosted a RS Postcard on Wednesday, 10th of November 2021 on the topic “World Kindness Day”.

The Postcard involved 55 students from eight schools in four countries (India, USA, South Africa, and Ghana). Following a welcome and introduction, delegates enjoyed a keynote introduction before sharing their collages on the topic of kindness and philanthropy. They then broke out into smaller groups to share personal perspectives and the Postcard concluded with an open session where delegates shared their learnings and asked questions.

Planning:

We planned this event by brainstorming tones of creative ideas and by having late night meetings to discuss the pros and cons of each idea as we wanted to give the delegates the best time. We asked the participants beforehand to share a collage submission of a collage of different acts of kindness in our day to day life which cost us nothing but make you richer.

Details:

The event began cheerfully with a warm welcome message addressed to the delegates followed by the introduction of hosts, the itinerary and the introduction of the schools attending followed by the introduction of the topic.

We then invited representatives from the participating schools to present the collages they submitted as part of their pre-work activity. The delegates spoke with enthusiasm and we were extremely delighted that almost all of the delegates actively contributed and spoke out about the topic to a point where we had to skip over one of the activities and dive into the Barraza sessions.

We discussed several introspective questions in the Barraza sessions, and then concluded the session with delegates sharing final thoughts and a quick Q&A.

Challenges

During the planning we faced many challenges – initially the session was planned without Baraza sessions but was later altered and Baraza sessions were included. We had one and a half days to rearrange and adjust the content for the Postcard accordingly.

Two of our team members drop out at the very last second causing the team of six to become a team of four, so we had to reassign roles of the event the night before the Postcard.

Impact:

Through the whole planning and executing process, we learned to handle any kind of last minute challenges, and the importance of teamwork in getting past those obstacles. We also learned more about our colleagues as people.

The Postcard on the whole was very knowledgeable and enlightening. The delegates spoke about the importance of kindness to one-self and kindness to the environment. They discussed how small acts of kindness have huge impacts. One of the delegates quoted “you need to show them kindness for you to get kindness in return,” this was something simple yet memorable. As hosts we went in nervous and sweating and came out extremely satisfied.

Advice:

• relax and not to fret, the delegates aren’t there to judge you but to talk and learn about the topic.
• listen to your delegates keenly as there definitely will be some ingenious thoughts and ideas to be shared.
• Have a goal to learn something from the session and always SMILE

Author: Student Planning Committee, Hyderabad Public School