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Silver Trip 13 - 15th Feb 2019

International Award for Young People (IAYP)- Memories for a lifetime


 

The IAYP trip for the Silver Level (Certification) was enjoyable, exciting, and thoroughly invigorating (and something we had looked forward to for an entire year!). Students of grade 11 completed three trekking expeditions, each ‘supposedly’ being 10 km long, over two pleasant February days. After being divided into 9 teams, each team was handed a map and a sheet of paper with details of checkpoints, which they used to navigate their way through the dry grasses, on slippery rocks across gentle water bodies and up steep slopes of the rocky mountainous terrain, needing us to pace ourselves to ensure our safety. If you were to sneak a peak into any of our treks, you’d probably hear an amalgam of directions, laughter, loud singing, gossiping and slurping (juice) and also getting absolutely and completely lost! Friendly competition lined each trek, thus serving as inherent motivation for all the groups.

 

 

Collaboration with a team of students while catering to the requirements of each team member proved to significantly build our cooperation and teamwork, even if it was often a struggle. The random assortment of people into groups led to the formation of new friendships and the strengthening of old ones.

 

 

Despite having strong mobile network coverage, students refrained from using their phones, preferring instead to spend time bonding with each other. Evening time was abound by comfortable chatter, team games, dances and even cooking! Having done IAYP bronze before, it was easy to adjust to the beautiful bunk beds and group bunking (in fact it was thoroughly fun to be together all the time!)

 

The treks consisted of skill-based learning. Many skills were honed during the course, leadership and navigation some essential ones learnt through experience. All members put in consistent group efforts to ensure maximum comfort as well as efficiency; the team even had the patience to take frequent breaks whenever the heat beat down resulting in the dire thirst for fruit juice or a member’s laces came undone (which, unsurprisingly, was a common occurrence), and some took the effort to teach their fellow teammates tricks to ensure their laces do not open repetitively. The treks also sharpened the students’ navigational and observational skills as they kept a keen eye out for checkpoints and referred to map of the landscape and the compass to find their way through rough terrain.

 

On an even more personal note, the treks taught us to persevere no matter how drained or fed up we were. It taught us to work as a team, seamlessly, so that we could communicate without words to each other through the use of a game—each team had to use bamboo segments in order to get a ping pong ball from point A to a red solo cup at point B. Other times, our perseverance was fueled by friendly competition. Every grade 11 team wanted to beat the other teams so badly that all the pain and struggle was pushed aside to yield a cohesive atmosphere for personal development. Despite each person’s exhaustion, we managed to bond after the treks, and we even celebrated Shaivi’s birthday with cake and chocolate!

 

Here’s what some of the students had to day:

 

IAYP Silver was an exhilarating experience for me. Having to navigate through the forests and traversing off the beaten path was a once in life time experience for me. I learnt the values of teamwork and importance of communication skills in such expeditions. It goes without saying that I would love to do this over again.

~ Ishayu Das

 

We experienced a myriad of emotions:

 

Excitement: excited to know what the other days would hold for us in the trip
Happiness: being able to spend time with our friends and enjoy each other's company Sadness: losing a game and we had a long while to go to the next checkpoint and an even longer walk to reach our tents

~ Malav Popat

 

The main objective of IAYP is to empower youth (and satisfy a part of the activity component of CAS); every participant will attest to the fact that this was accomplished on the trip. I don’t think I’ve seen brighter smiles at the end of the camp, all 100 faces were plastered with satisfied grins as the empowering feeling of independence and self-sufficiency warmed our hearts when they managed to cook on a ‘chula’ in the middle of nowhere. We returned home, exhausted from the treks, most stressed about the upcoming psychology test, with not only an IAYP silver certificate, but also a myriad of memories of our last class trip before we head off to college!

~ Aanya Shahani