Every Girl Scout’s pride is her Gold Award. Vachi Kalra, a junior at American High School, has been looking forward to this award for the past nine years and finally set her project in motion this summer. Her project, Dance for a Change, was a summer initiative to offer affordable Bollywood dance classes to children in the Bay Area. Kalra had to go through an extensive process to get her project approved. She spent two to three months simply brainstorming and generating ideas.
“I was divided between creating a fitness app or doing dance classes,” she says, “but eventually realized I was more passionate about dance.
Kalra has been dancing for the past 11 years and recognizes that dance classes in the Bay Area are often expensive. Her main goal with these workshops is to provide an affordable alternative for children to explore their passions for dance. Once she had her idea, Kalra’s biggest challenge was communication. She had to speak to several advisors and revise the idea multiple times before she began the groundwork. Through these meetings, Kalra says she learned how to conduct herself more professionally.
‘Dance classes have always been a place for me to release my stress, and I wanted to bring the same openness to my classes’ – Vachi Kalra
After her idea was approved, Kalra began constructing the curriculum for the summer workshop. She collaborated with three other choreographers to make a four-minute Bollywood/hip-hop dance.
“Dance classes have always been a place for me to release my stress, and I wanted to bring the same openness to my classes,” says Kalra.
One of her greatest challenges in creating and teaching the choreography was adapting it to a wide variety of skillsets. Amongst the 25 children who came to classes, some had already taken dance classes, while others had not. Kalra worked with her choreographers after every class to slightly adjust the steps and ensure each child could dance with confidence.
As Kalra continues this project next summer, she hopes to improve her marketing. This past summer, she mostly gained students through word-of-mouth marketing. Next year, she plans to start her advertising early on and create flyers and social media to gain more students. Kalra also hopes to continue her Changemaker Scholarship Program next year. Each year, two to three students are selected for a $200 scholarship based on their impact on the community.
“I feel like the incentive of a $200 scholarship worked really well to attract attention, and I would definitely like to expand that next year,” says Kalra.
Beyond how she helped students in the community, Kalra feels this project has taught her many valuable lessons. While working with a team of choreographers and leading students, she has learned how she can be a better teacher and is more confident when working with a team. Kalra says she felt her program was truly successful when she saw her kids do their final performance in front of their parents. The sheer number of kids that attended the workshops exceeded Kalra’s expectations.
As she saw her kids, from beginners to experts, master the skills she poured 100 hours into producing and executing, Kalra recognized that “community can truly come together in amazing ways.”
