Episode 1: The Meet Up

As VOLTA, we find great happiness in mentoring and educating our younger selves. This single mission is what led the members to show up to the very first official meet up early February this year. The meet up was held at Arboretum, the perfect location for such a meeting since over there we all felt free to talk our minds out underneath all the trees and the fresh air. We all came prepared to share ideas and to even listen to what our able coordinator, had in store for us.

Catching up was the first order of business. Old friends got to share stories on how college life was treating them and many other life updates. ‘All smiles’ is what could describe that moment.

Afterwards, Zulekha explained to us in details about VOLTA’s main goal and ways in which we were going to achieve it. Stepping into her leadership role, she divided us into teams of four and gave us little skit plays that involved different scenarios. All these skits were a representation of challenges happening in today’s society and mostly problems that affect teenagers. One group had to come up with a creative way of showing how kids struggle growing up in a household where their parents fight while another group demonstrated how difficult it is for some teenagers to handle sex conversations in relationships, especially those who have never received sex education.

Having shared our lessons from the skits, we all understood how critical it was for organizations such as VOLTA to thrive and educate the next generation. It shed light on what our work will be like when we start our outreach programs and reminded us of what a privilege it was for us, that we got to learn about these issues at an early age. We also got to receive individual roles so as to facilitate smooth running of the organization.

Later in the afternoon we had our late lunch, discussed about what each person’s vision was for VOLTA and made a few banters before leaving. It was such a fulling day that left all of us ready and eager for our first project of impacting the world positively, one teenager at a time.