International Round Square Conference 2009

The International Round Square Conference this year was hosted by Mayo College and Mayo College Girls' School. Which are both located in Ajmer, a place in the state of Rajasthan, India. The theme of the conference was 'Lead me from darkness to light'.

The Service Day

During the RS International Conference, I was chosen for service day to go into Ajmer therefore participating in scrubbing and cleaning of a historic fort.

My primary objective was to be principled and respect the tasks with others have provided for me even though I may have disagreed with it. This was due to the smell of the terrible bird dung. That was all you could sense throughout the process of getting rid of contamination. In my perspective, this was the down side of participating in a job like this. However, I was able to interact and communicate with people who I've just met then during the cleaning process. Everyone was very friendly and came from different cultures and ethnic backgrounds. We all went through similar experiences. Even though I was being pessimistic where I questioned, what was the point in doing what I had to do? How is cleaning a historic fort going to benefit the Indian society in terms of the less developed communities? At the time, I didn't see this activity to be a true service project even though it's categorised as service.

My point of view on this activity

Some poor individuals are living in the worst conditions. I have observed this through my own eyes of people homeless and sleeping in the streets, children of different ages begging for money from strangers through my bus ride. Shouldn't we be helping these people, or at least try to develop their lives rather than cleaning a property of the government which probably does not benefit anyone. This activity did not proceed the way I wanted it to proceed. I'd rather be working in the slums and helping an individual's life. Even though, this event is Service in benefiting the government or tourists, I believe that I could have done something more efficient. This may involve actually interacting with the local Indians, especially in the slum areas and helping them directly in contrast to staying in a bubble all the time. However, through this I do not mean to offend anyone because I do respect the Indian culture also.

Did I achieved what I initially aimed for?

Personally, even though I wasn't very satisfied with the job, I learned to be principled and patient. This was because it would have been very rude to complain, therefore you should just get on with your job. I respect the Indian culture, however the host school should have organised a better service project which involves us interacting with the local people. Moreover, the advantage of the trip was that I became more knowledgeable about the history of India. This was because before we took part in the project, a man explained to us the Indian history which I've never heard of before. Also, after the project we all had the opportunity to observe different historical objects within the museum area.

Myself and other people I met during the conference scrubbing one of the fort buildings