Mini Project Mania '21

Mini project Mania is an annual competition organized to enhance the imaginative capacities of individuals or, as the caption goes, “to sparkle creative minds”. Here the newbies of RACOUP are provided with an opportunity to present their project ideas in which top 10 individuals with the best ideas will be provided with an opportunity to execute them.

Some of the most notable ideas from past years’ competition winners magnified into massive projects are Captures, Fat to Fit and BITL (First Aid Awareness Project).

Usually, the fledglings of any club are very quiet and less interactive, more socially awkward, and less prone to come forth and share their ideas. Hence, this is a project that is mainly targeted towards the fledglings of RACOUP for them to get rid of their social anxiety, become more sociable, and allow their wings of creativity to soar. 

This project allowed the newbies to make new friends among their batches & faculties. And also, this allowed them to broaden their knowledge on various aspects of life and develop their soft skills such as communication, organizational skills.

Due to the current Covid -19 pandemic plaguing our communities, our everyday lifestyle has become severely sedentary and monotonous due to long periods of quarantine and lockdowns. Therefore, organizing competitions such as these will help our members to lift their minds off the routinely stressful, constantly lingering thoughts of boredom, financial burden, academic burden, and whatnot and allow themselves to be excited and look forward to the near future.

Accordingly, an approximate sum of 130 responses submitted via google forms were narrowed down to about 30 ideas, with each categorized under a specific concept. Subsequently, the Executive Committee members of RACOUP further narrowed down the top 30 ideas, selecting the top 10 finalists by voting.

On the 16th May, a series of in-person discussions were held via Zoom, followed by a Q&A session to select the best 3 out of the top 10 finalist. Nonetheless, all top 10 finalists will be provided an opportunity to magnify their ‘mini’ ideas into massive projects in the near future.

 Each of the finalists was given a specific time slot in which they were able to present their ideas and answer the various questions thrown at them by the judge board.

The questionnaire included questions on various aspects concerning the execution of their ideas, such as the financial aspect, number of phases, background of the concept, objectives, duration, number of attendees etc.

After tediously long hours of interviews and presentations and a substantial amount of conversations among the panelists, the best 3 ideas were selected out of the top 10. They were selected by the panelists mainly based on the amount of research that had gone into presenting their concepts in a comprehensive manner, innovativeness of the idea and the possibility of executing the project in the near future; accordingly, 2 online projects and 1 hybrid project were selected.

 The top 3 finalists and a small description of their corresponding project ideas are as follows

• Nimasha Ranathunga- Conduction of a series of webinars on dreaming
• Shakthi Senarathne- Conduction of a series of webinars on vaccination and related topics
• Kusal Bandara – Conduction of a series of webinars to help choose the appropriate pathway for students who have finished their A/Ls