IBLC Aatish-e-Duroon – Day 1

Written by: Sidra Ajmal
Photo credits: Faraz Jaffery Clicks

IBLC is one of the major events of IBA and has been very popular among the youth of Karachi in the past. The 6th edition of this conference began today at the IBA Main Campus. This time the conference saw around 120 young people from different colleges and universities coming as participants.

The day was officially kick started with a warm up session, whereby all the cluster facilitators gave a peppy performance and got all the participants energized. Soon afterwards, the teams which were randomly made were announced and allotted to each of the CF’s. It was interesting to see the nervousness and excitement among the people as they finally found out who would be in their team for the next five days of the conference. Some rejoiced at finding that a person they knew was in their group while others were a bit shaky at the thought of being among so many strangers.
To ease the apprehension and anxiety of the participants, all the CFs were directed to take their team outside where a number of stimulating ice-breaking exercises had been planned. Firstly, all of them were supposed to give their introduction during which some of them gave a formal account of their studies and colleges while others were more creative with their approach. While this got the conversations started and the ice broken, the next set of activities brought out the competitive edge among them. Each team had a face off with one of the other teams. These face offs included the following:

• A modified form of kabbadi in which each person from opposing teams was to come one at a time and try to get a bottle placed in the center before the person from the other team.

• A game in which one team made a circle by joining hands while the participants of other group were inside the circle and had to try to break the circle.

• An activity whereby participants made a bridge with their hands and their one team mate was supposed to cross it by walking on hand-made bridge.

What the above activities did was that they created a bond amongst the team members immediately and also helped to break the ice further. The CFs played a huge part in motivating and cheering their team throughout.

After this each of the team was given the task to come up an innovative name for their groups and also a slogan. This is the point where the creativity of participants really came out. The names of some of the cluster and their slogans that were really catchy are given bellow:

• Team Name: Chichori Jawani
Slogan: Thumak thumak k ayi hai kon? Chichori Jawani, Chichori Jawani
• Team Name: Chokary Jawan
Slogan: Chokaray cha gaye tha kar k
• Team Name: Atish-e-Chingari
Slogan: Aag laga deingay
• Team Name: Garam anday
Slogan: Garam anday le lo
• Team Name: Bindas Youth
Slogan: Halla Bol, Ankhain Khol

After all these activities were done, the name of the Day Champ (trainer for the day) was announced and it was Mr. Arsalan Larik who is a certified trainer and has trained over 20,000 people till today. He seemed to really hit it off with the audience and got them filled with enthusiasm in just a few minutes. He had also come prepared with his own set of activities. Some of the activities which he gave were:

• Scavenger Hunt
• To act out a crazy catfight
• To perform a group Kawali
• To spell out IBLC with your body

When the activities were done, the participants as well as the MT members were given the much needed lunch break and were treated to a scrumptious meal of Kababs, Halwa and puri.

With the adjournment of the lunch break, the second half of the day started with mostly speakers, coming up on the stage and giving motivations talks and advices on how to become a better individual. The participants listened eagerly to these individuals and took away a great deal of learnings and lessons from them.

With the end of the 1st day of IBLC drawing close, many were sad that it was already ending but were excited at the thought that only a few hours were left until the start of the next day. They were eager to find out what the next day had in store for them. Needless to say that the office bearers of ILC and the team members of IBLC did a splendid job in pulling of the first day of IBLC 6. Cheers to Team IBLC!