The trend of students organising academic events and cultural fests in a big manner has set in all colleges across the country. This provides students the opportunity to lead and conduct the events with minimal faculty and management support and it turns out to be learning experience, say students.
Further, organising such events also helps develop a sense of responsibility, bring out leadership qualities, and discover individuality.
As a result the students get the necessary experience to step in to the world outside to take up jobs.
For Shraddha Singtia of St. Xavier's college, Mumbai, meeting company executives for sponsorship provided a sneak peak into the way they do business. As the person in-charge of marketing for the event, Malhar, she got a chance to network with people from big corporate companies. “In raising sponsorship one gets a real-life experience of doing business through some tough negotiations. Interacting with them made me realise that confidence and presence of mind are keys to convincing sponsors,” says Shraddha.
The students say they also need to be innovative as they are in competition with students of other colleges who are organising similar festivals and tapping sponsors for support.
Ravi Shankar, a former Chairperson of the Literary Association of PSG College of Arts and Science, says starting from the conception to settling bills post-event, the events are a new experience to the students. For instance, for an event, the expenses estimated were way too high compared to the availability of financial resources. He had to take a stand and he did so by cutting down avoidable expenses. In the process, he had to convince fellow committee members. At the end of it he developed some finance management skills and the art of taking along all members to work towards a common objective.
Handling a dance event, Yugam, helped him hone time, money management and problem-solving skills, says Abhilash Ajjan, a student of the Kumaraguru College of Technology. “There was this occasion where I had to make members with varied positions agree on a point in organising the event. The flipside was that if I didn’t, the event could be derailed. But, I managed to solve the issue by encouraging proper communication among the team members and highlighting the need for supporting one another,” he says.
(Reporting by
Amritha Suryakumar,
Infanta Vincy and
Sonia Jain)