On Saturday 16th April 2011, SCB Finance hosted its third event with GOAL, a little over a year after the idea for a collective, “sustainable” volunteering initiative for the India Finance team was first conceived. The earlier custom built “train-the-trainer” pilot event with the GOAL and NGO staff, followed by delivery of the GOAL “financial literacy” module on banking and finance to the girls associated with the Hamara Foundation, had both gone off well.
But this time was different – a much larger group (more than double compared with the previous events) to handle, coupled with a first time “education cum sports day” experience for the GOAL MSPT and VBM school girls, just prior to their summer break – expectations were running high !
The YMCA Jhoola Maidan at Mumbai Central, which till 8.30am wore a relatively deserted look, was suddenly teeming with about 100 people (75 from GOAL), all charged up and raring to go ! Eight groups were quickly formed, introductions done and the day began with the Finance volunteers, combining with the GOAL champions, to deliver two of the exercises on Communication which constituted part of the GOAL “Be Yourself” module, one of the starting curriculum for this batch of adolescent school girls, aged 13-15 years.
A short break for much needed refreshments and the stage was set for the highly anticipated fun-cum-educational, theme based, team sports ! The pre-summer heat notwithstanding, competitive spirits ran high as the eight groups engaged with one another in five games ranging from elephant trunk, to electric wire and fill your bottle, aided and egged on by the Finance staff - and also, quite unexpectedly, by a large group of curious onlookers gathered around the periphery of the ground !
A surprise team event for the SCB staff and an impromptu net ball session, was followed by a debrief on the games, which summarised the learnings for the day by linking the sports activities back to the key themes of the Communication related exercises conducted earlier. The day culminated with a prize distribution ceremony and lunch.
Mission, or rather GOAL, accomplished, the Finance team, like true bankers, looks forward to fostering the new relationship in the second half of this year, leveraging our expertise by delivering the “financial literacy” module to these girls in a live banking environment.
