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This article is based on an example of how students re-imagined a mundane classroom as a hotbed of space exploration, and how giving students agency to creatively re-imagine learning spaces can inspire taking action.

" The PYP: From principles into practice supports flexible learning spaces where 'students who are involved into designing their learning spaces feel greater ownership and influence over their learning.'"

Remember when you were a child and the living room suddenly became an obstacle course? That same living room became a hotbed for spies and agents with secret bases behind the couch and a jail under the table. It goes without saying that the floor was, occasionally, lava.

I have learned that encouraging students to see their learning space as an opportunity, or blank canvas, can truly inspire creativity and meaningful connections. As educators, we almost always try to have hands-on provocations when tuning in to a central idea. How many teachers have redesigned learning spaces according to a certain theme or worked hard to set up engaging learning environments? We set these up for the students and throw them inside to get them thinking of big ideas and inquiring questions. Yet how many students have agency not only to interact with their learning spaces, but to re-imagine them completely? I realized that continuing this practice of re-imagining and designing learning spaces with increasing student agency would motivate my students to tangible action at the end of our unit. The PYP: From principles into practice supports flexible learning spaces where "students who are involved into designing their learning spaces feel greater ownership and influence over their learning".

In a unit inquiring into how space exploration and technology have impacted life, we began exploring constellations as one of the earliest forms of space exploration-observation. With given guidelines, students created their own constellations and hung them from the ceiling, noting how they only form a recognizable "picture" when viewed from a certain angle. They concluded that constellations are basically human constructs, with a practical purpose only on Earth. We took our passion for the stars further and made constellation tubes that we debuted in our walk-in storage closet at the back of the class.

Walking into that storage closet was an inspirational experience for the students. They all noticed it was dark and much colder than our classroom. Eyes lit up and creative thinking skills began whirring, and they realized that we had gone on a field trip to space. Two units later, that closet is still called "space" by all the students in the classroom. At this moment, learning spaces were being re-imagined and there was no holding back as the reins shifted from teacher to students. A week later, as I rotated guided reading groups, students who were not reading with me were given agency to change our learning space to reflect our learning. We already had "stars" hanging from the ceiling, and our own makeshift planetarium, what was next?

Students tipped unused chairs and created a "rocket launching corner" where they could sit back and imagine lifting off as the SpaceX astronauts were doing that very day! This became a favourite spot during class transitions. Students mimicked the words they heard on live broadcasts of launches and the ISS. For a class where English is not a first language for the vast majority, these imaginative games and spaces helped foster language practice and transcended language barriers. As the PYP: the learning community outlines, learning spaces should be accessible and accommodate welcoming flexible zones for different activities, such as dramatic play.

"Watching my classroom be transformed into a constellation exhibition, planetarium, rocket launchpad, and sleepover room was incredible. "

Then came the most ambitious action of all. Students began to ask me that if we were learning all about space, how come we were not studying at night? Students lobbied the school administration with an action plan to conduct a night class at school on star-gazing and light pollution. Their logic and enthusiasm were undeniable. Our classroom transformed once again into a sleepover room where students spent a night in school to learn about light pollution in an authentic setting. This learning was finally cultivated into a science fair where students employed their communication skills to share their experience and knowledge with other PYP students of various grades.

Watching my classroom be transformed into a constellation exhibition, planetarium, rocket launchpad, and sleepover room was incredible. I definitely didn't imagine all this as I sat down with my unit planner 5 weeks before. The students swept me up into a fantastical realm where you really can go to space from the classroom. I learned that re-imagining learning spaces and encouraging student creativity in seeing a chair as a rocket allows for enthusiastic and hands-on learning experiences on topics that are hard to manifest.

Lynne Bibi is a 5 th grade Homeroom teacher at the International School of Tallinn. Lynne is passionate about sustainability and learning spaces. She has presented in a conference about bringing street art into literacy classes and made her own classroom swing and other flexible seating options out of upcycled materials and without a budget. Lynne is a PYP enthusiast and has been teaching in PYP classrooms since 2016. She is every administration's dream as her constantly changing learning spaces require a very low budget, but occasionally ends up sleeping in school with her students which results in a little more paperwork.

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Transforming learning spaces through imagination

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This article is based on an example of how students re-imagined a mundane classroom as a hotbed of space exploration, and how giving students agency to creatively re-imagine learning spaces can inspire taking action.

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Stay up to date with news from the IB community. Here you can find news and stories about students, educators, schools and alumni, read research about the IB, and listen to podcasts from the community. Use the search filters to find content by region, topic, format and publication dates.

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Our school celebrated its first Action Day in April 2018, providing a real-world opportunity for our students to exhibit their action. The audience saw how students our PYP community prepared themselves to reflect, choose and act in becoming caring members of the society.

The school organized Action Day for all students from kindergarten to grade 5 (including the PYP exhibition) to showcase their learning in different units or talk about an issue they had researched within a unit of inquiry.

This day represented students' innovative and prevailing understanding of the real world and its issues of global significance. This learning was an inquiry that started from a particular interest of their choice and stretched into real-world local and global issues, and was an opportunity for students to showcase their learning.

Students of upper primary engaged in a collaborative, transdisciplinary inquiry process that involved them in identifying and investigating real life issues or problems. They investigated issues like deforestation, discrimination, pollution, population, water as a resource and endangered species, and the ways these concerns impact human community.

The entire process integrated application of key questions posed by the students and supported them to use their knowledge from all the approaches to learning. The exhibition offered opportunities for students to display positive attitudes and the attributes of the learner profile. It paved way to engage students in positive action by connecting to prior learning and applying it to an unfamiliar situation, thus providing an appropriate environment for sympathizing around real world issues.
Flow of events
The event started with presentations for the school community in which the students manifested the skills, attitudes and attributes that they have imbibed throughout their learning. During the day, each grade level gave the synopsis of the issues they had chosen to inquire into through various performances and exhibits.

Grade 5 students explored two issues: gender discrimination and water as a resource. The team performed a dance showing the importance of women in society and asked the audience to take a pledge towards the safety of women in India. Later, they presented a movie that they had made which showcased the respect that should be given to all females. They also presented their findings about water usage and wastage within their school and provided a list of action items/suggestions to the management for reducing water usage with the campus.

Grade 4 began their exciting and challenging journey by talking about issues like pollution, population, endangered species and deforestation. Inquiring into such issues made them realize their rights and responsibilities, developed ethical understanding, and empowered them to become active citizens in the future.

Grade 3 researched diseases. They performed a street play showing their awareness about mental health issues and conveyed to the viewers the trials and tribulations faced by people with mental health concerns.

Grade 2 inquired into reduce, reuse and recycle. They performed a play to show the importance of conserving trees and danced to a song based on the theme "conserve the environment."

Grade 1 performed a musical play about water. The play depicted the importance of water in our lives and gave a clear message that water should not be wasted and should be used wisely.

Kindergarten also had a role on this day. They decided to display their action by performing on different themes. Our nursery students danced to a song to show the importance of day and night in our lives and the need to wake up early. Kindergarten 1 students represented themselves dressed as different community helpers and demonstrated the respect to be given to these people. Kindergarten 2 performed a musical play to show the significance of plants in our lives. The message was clear - "We should save our plants".

As part of their action, all students of the PYP-from nursery to grade 5-were working on sustainable practices to save our planet Earth and created many items from their Reduce, Reuse, Recycle campaign, which were sold to the parent/student community on this day. The proceeds from this sale were donated to charity.

Kapil Mehrotra is the Head of PYP at Sharanya Narayani International School (an IB candidate school). He has been associated with the programme for the past 16 years - previously a PYP teacher, Head of Academics and a Coordinator. He is passionate about the PYP and wants students to take meaningful action from their learning. He encourages teachers to develop professionally on the various aspects of the program and conducts in school training sessions for them from time to time on different modules. You can follow him on Twitter @MEHROTRAKAPIL.

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Our school celebrated its first Action Day in April 2018, providing a real-world opportunity for our students to exhibit their action. The audience saw how students our PYP community prepared themselves to reflect, choose and act in becoming caring members of the society.

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Middle Years Programme (MYP) individuals and societies teacher Elizabeth Solomon explains why listening to students' voices is the best learning an IB teacher can do.

Listening, done purposefully, is a powerful form of empathy-a collaborative approaches to learning (ATL) skill that improves schools and empowers students by involving them in the approaches to teaching (ATT). And listening to our students is what we did at The Independent Schools Foundation Academy (ISF) in Hong Kong, when we began to formulate our approach to service as action a few years ago. Viewed as our bilingual school's mission in action, our approach to service as action is most clearly articulated in our school definition of 'global guardianship'.

In the Middle Years Programme (MYP), we began embedding service as action within the taught curriculum, with opportunities for student-initiated service in co-curricular activities and via student school leadership. In a bid to shift our service as action culture from being indirect, teacher-led and synonymous mostly with charity to a culture where service as action is student-initiated, direct, principled and transformative, we asked our students to give us feedback on the existing programme. Through surveys and student-led panel discussions, thoughts were collected and then student leaders consolidated them into action points.

First, we listened; then, we acted:

WHAT THE STUDENTS SAID: "Teach me ethics, so I may do no harm (unintentionally)".

WHAT WE DID: On our international service trips, discussions on ethics arising from awareness about the dangers of voluntourism and privilege led to the creation of student-focused tools. Students are made aware of their privilege and identify areas where ethical discretion is needed. Here, the application of ethics has been grouped by students into five categories with pragmatic and philosophical purposes-safety, ecology, dignity, equity and integrity with guiding questions to ensure self-examination.

"Engaging with our local community is very important to ISF and Chinese values have also strongly influenced our approach".

WHAT THE STUDENTS SAID: "Guide me, and then let me take charge of my own service".

WHAT WE DID: Both the design and the wording of the service ladder benefitted from student critique-"I" language puts the onus of actions on the student, command terms offer opportunities for transfer and subject knowledge activation and deep reflection is promoted. In most IB World Schools where creativity, activity, service (CAS)/service coordinators cannot reach most students and making meaningful subject links is hard for teachers, students have reported success in independent use.

WHAT THE STUDENTS SAID: "Make the service as action outcomes accessible, logical and meaningful for me".

WHAT WE DID:The service ladder is a taxonomy-based student and teacher tool and a subset of the MYP developmental ladder created by the ISF Academy, in the context of Diploma Programme (DP) studies at the University of Melbourne. It has been tested, trialled and shaped by my MYP five students. Powerfully, the seven service as action outcomes embedded within its bloom-aligned "rungs" create a logical pathway for action, with reflection pit stops at every step. Here, the students wanted a tracking device to navigate independently as they progressed on their service as action journey.

Engaging with our local community is very important to ISF and Chinese values have also strongly influenced our approach. Specifically, the Confucian virtue of 'Ren' or '仁', meaning humanity or compassion drives this focus on listening and learning-for teachers and students alike. Aligned with the IB learner profile of 'caring', activating this embedded value has helped us move the discussion about service from sympathy-feeling sorry for those in need to empathy-standing with others via our shared humanity. While the idea of empathy is universally valued, understanding and implementing this complex skill is easier said than done for adults and young people alike. Having a bilingual and bicultural values-based approach has made this skill more tangible.

In the words of one of our MYP five students: " I may never fully understand the experience of another, but as a human, I have experienced pain. I can use this shared understanding to stand with them and connect and help as needed. Then, I become a better human; and if we all do this, it is how we become better 'ren' (people)".

Empathy teaching tool

Embedding ethics into the curriculum encourages our students to be reflexive and self-critical of their actions. Students help design self-regulating tools to use in service as action like the one below. These tools spark honest discussions about intended vs actual impact, as they attempt to live up to the IB mission of "making the world a better place".

Linking service and subject goals in the taught MYP curriculum has been the linchpin to making service as action integral to our teaching and learning. This shift in paradigm, which required teacher professional development, was achieved by the service as action coordinator participating in departmental meetings over a year, with a toolkit of ideas for integration into specific subjects. Co-creation of resources in units where service as action was an organic fit helped students understand the nuances and complexities of the "wicked" problems of the world.

All in all, the evolution of service as action at the ISF Academy is ongoing. Our collective thinking about service is constantly improving as student's voice grows stronger. The process is messy, far from perfect and requires hard work. Yet, we are committed-both to our school's mission and that of the IB-for the empowerment of our students who are the future guardians of our tumultuous world. One truth is clear to us: student involvement in our process has meant heightened awareness, better engagement and more mindful service actions.

This listening to our students has happened with our ears, eyes, mind and heart and has given our teaching a unique focus. Inadvertently, we, the teachers, have walked away with some of the best professional development any IB educator can ask for.
Have you listened to your students today?

Elizabeth Solomon is a Middle Years Programme (MYP) individuals and societies and Diploma Programme (DP) English language and literature master teacher at the ISF Academy. She has just finished her second master's degree, specialising in DP assessment at the University of Melbourne. Elizabeth is passionate about student-centered curricula. As the former service as action coordinator at her bilingual school, she co-developed the resources in this community post in collaboration with her MYP students. Raised between Mumbai, London, and Jerusalem, Elizabeth is an equity & peace activist who has lived and worked in India, Israel, Japan, and China. She now lives in Hong Kong with her partner and her twin teenagers, who are also MYP students and often, her best critics.

If you enjoyed this story, consider reading more below:

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Middle Years Programme (MYP) individuals and societies teacher Elizabeth Solomon explains why listening to students' voices is the best learning an IB teacher can do. Listening, done purposefully, is a powerful form of empathy-a collaborative approaches to learning (ATL) skill that improves schools and empowers students by involving them in the approaches to teaching (ATT).

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Action

Based on the results of the two-week period, students brainstormed ways to take action. Initially they created posters and TV screen messages as the first step towards raising awareness. Firstly, among other students, then to the community in general.

"In my opinion we can reduce the amount of food waste in two ways: firstly, when you go to the lunch hall you should always get something you like and in small portions. Secondly, put the food waste in the correct bin so the school can start a composting program or use it for farm animals to eat " - TISA student.

For this particular service learning, some of the successes recorded were that:

students created public service announcements on waste management, as well as posters and infographics which were well publicized on the aforementioned platforms. This message is permanently erected in the school cafeteria.

students presented the outcome from the action to parents during student-led conferences, with parents committing to taking action with students.

sustainability of the action is a main focus and this unit has become an exemplar for future service learning units in the school.

as a result of the action taken by this grade level, an MYP3 student was inspired to collect the organic waste to supply as food to animals in a local shelter which happens on a biweekly basis, in continuation of his middle year community project.

it also instigated the primary school student council to get involved, by initiating awareness activities on food waste within the local community.

Messages were translated into Russian and Azerbaijani languages for the locals in the community. Students also wrote letters to the school management and administration asking for a school wide embrace of "zero food waste" of which they were successful in getting the principal and school leadership to support their effort moving forward. In subsequent years, it is planned to build on this success by expanding into the local community while exploring connections with other subjects.

Reflection

'In Math we did this food waste project, as you can tell from the awareness you observe during lunch time. We should have more units like this because it could help to solve a variety of stuff issues around the world, and I think that's what everyone would love to do .' Bayne M1

' In this unit I learned that our local community doesn't eat food properly and most of the time when they don't like it, they just waste it. I think the benefits from service-learning units are to make a change in the world and the action my classmates took during this unit were huge and we managed to reduce the waste .' Sasha M1

Reflection is a critical part of every learning process. Students engaged in ongoing self-assessment and peer assessment throughout the process. The MYP Service as Action learning outcomes outlined in From Principles to Practice (page 22) are an excellent starting point for student reflections, they can also be used for the creation of adapted assessment criteria. For the purpose of this unit, MYP Mathematics Criteria C - Communicating and D - Applying mathematics in real life contexts were assessed, while the strands specifically related to communicating and presenting lend themselves easily to the assessing of Service as action. Besides the subject specific criteria assessed, students were also given feedback on their ATL skills, specifically collaboration, social skills, and self-organization.

Incorporating Service Learning into the school wide curriculum begins with a student-centered approach, but all stakeholders from the senior leadership, administration, teachers and students should have an understanding and be a part of the process. This is pivotal to what the school wants to achieve going forward with mission to " engage as thoughtful, generous and resilient members of our local and global communities, taking action in Azerbaijan and beyond

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Leveraging academic learning to create sustainable communities through a whole school approach to service as action

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Based on the results of the two-week period, students brainstormed ways to take action. Initially they created posters and TV screen messages as the first step towards raising awareness. Firstly, among other students, then to the community in general.

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Stay up to date with news from the IB community. Here you can find news and stories about students, educators, schools and alumni, read research about the IB, and listen to podcasts from the community. Use the search filters to find content by region, topic, format and publication dates.

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Stay up to date with news from the IB community. Here you can find news and stories about students, educators, schools and alumni, read research about the IB, and listen to podcasts from the community. Use the search filters to find content by region, topic, format and publication dates.

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The Above the Margin project aimed to:

Allow students to learn about corporate involvement in sustainable development goals.

Create awareness amongst the public on the involvement of the corporate world in the fulfilment of the SDGs through the website and social media portals.

Create an interface between the learner and the organizations to analyse as well as share collective opinions and information on specific SDGs taken up by the organizations.

Critically evaluate the impact of SDGs taken up by the organization on the local community.

Culminate awareness amongst the students of what role individuals can play in order to provide viable solutions to some of the global issues by the end of the project.

How the project was conducted

Through collaborative consensus and significance of the SDGs in local context, the students focused on goals related to: Climate Action, No Poverty, Good Health and Well-being, Quality Education, Gender Equality, Clean Water and Sanitation, Affordable and Clean Energy, as well as Industry, Innovation, and Infrastructure.

A sustainable development goal (SDG) was chosen by the class and then explored through secondary research on organizations of all scales around the world. A complete exploration of the SDG was achieved by directly contacting an organization, in order to shed light on their perspective of the goal. This ensured that the information was reliable, genuine and also allowed the students to gain knowledge of real-world experiences through the lens of organizations. Using this information, students wrote articles and published them on the Above the Margin website.

Interviews with executives from numerous organisations were carried out through official channels of communication and on online platforms. For example:

Diya Naidu, Founder of Akalka student-run non-profit social enterprise from Bengaluru, India, that aims at increasing financial literacy among women in India.

Wilson Lawrence, Vice President and General Manager of Climate ETC Technology Services Private Limited, also known as Trane Technologies: the holding company of global refrigeration and air conditioning giants such as Thermoking, Ameristar, American Standard, etc. and fortune 500 energy company Trane.

Sai Santhosh, General Manager (finance and strategy), Zonta Infratech Pvt. Ltd - A waste management and infrastructure company focusing on innovative solutions to waste disposal, water treatment and energy production through waste.

Dr. Victor Paul, Head of Department of Social Work and Director of Centre for Social Action, Christ University - the leading educational institution (University Studies) in the state of Karnataka with six campuses spread out across the country. The University focuses on aiding social mobility, equality and skill-based learning.

Project outputs and impact on the students

Through the project, various forms of output such as blogs, articles, videos, interviews, surveys, photographs, and social media posts were created.

This CAS experience through the lens of Business Management allowed students real-world experiences, such as establishing links with the subject, applying sampling types, formation of questionnaires, and evaluation of sources that were learned in BM classes. Additionally, concepts of CSR, organizational structuring, and HR management were integrated into different areas explored in the project.

A CAS celebration day was held at the school, where students demonstrated their learning outcomes and skills acquired from participating in the project.

In the words of Above the Margin member Shruti Penumarti:

"Collectively, we initially viewed this project as strenuous, time-consuming, and difficult. This was partly true at the beginning of the process when we were still attempting to gain an understanding of the project's aims and goals. But as we continued with our interviews and further developed the website, not only did we gain confidence in our work, but it also became increasingly enjoyable. We were able to learn about organizations, not online, but by the organizations themselves. This allowed us to have first-hand exposure of how the SDGs were being handled, not by big multinational corporations, but with businesses founded in India itself. By the end of this process, not only did we gain real-world experience and knowledge about sustainability, we also learned the skills of communication, collaboration, and critical thinking. T his journey truly opened our minds about how different global issues around us can be solved with a collaborative effort by both organizations and individuals".

Ashwath Rajkumar , student head of the project said:

"The project gave us insight into the intricacies and internal procedures of a business - t hings you cannot view from the outside, which allowed us to truly understand how leadership styles and organizational cultures affect efficiency and motivation within an organization. The experience allowed me to grow as a leader , as we had to ensure we kept the deadlines issued by us at the beginning of the month. Failing to do so could adversely impact the timely nature we wanted to establish for the projects. I saw a huge leap in initiation and critical thinking in the team, which I take as the most important outcome from this project."

Future plans for the project

One of the main highlights of the project is that the students were keen on having their juniors to continue the project, and subsequently handed it over to them. Future developments for Above the Margin will widen the scope of the research, and build upon the knowledge already gained. The new chapter of Above the Margin (the juniors) has planned on targeting financial institutions, starting with one of the largest public banks in India, SBI (State Bank of India). The new objective of Above the Margin is to complete the exploration of the remaining sustainable development goals and organizational types.

In today's world where organizational structuring and cultures are actively evolving as a result of the effects of globalization, organizations have become more diverse. By extending the project, a wider range of organizations can be explored and paint a more accurate picture of corporate involvement in achieving social objectives.

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Sustainability goals and corporate involvement: project-based learning through creativity, activity, service (CAS)

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The Above the Margin project aimed to: Allow students to learn about corporate involvement in sustainable development goals. Create awareness amongst the public on the involvement of the corporate world in the fulfilment of the SDGs through the website and social media portals.

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Stay up to date with news from the IB community. Here you can find news and stories about students, educators, schools and alumni, read research about the IB, and listen to podcasts from the community. Use the search filters to find content by region, topic, format and publication dates.

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By Dr Manisha Mehta

"In any situation, there is a sacred-solution".―Lailah Gifty Akita, Think Great: Be Great!

This quote reminded me of the students of our school, who relentlessly kept the true spirit of IB alive through their efforts. When in most parts of the world students were struggling to find solutions for completion of work in the difficult pandemic situation, the outstanding Goenkans were already at work on different creativity, activity, service (CAS) projects.

Service and volunteering have been at the forefront during this time of the COVID-19 (Coronavirus) crisis. To stay safe, social distancing is the key, but it does not actually mean social isolation. We're all together in this situation, so we decided to dedicate the month of June 2020 as the CAS month so that students could engage constructively during the summer holidays when everybody was restricted to their homes due to the countrywide lockdown. Students were involved in numerous projects and activities and ventured into territories untrodden before.

The year 2020 has been unique in so many ways. On one side, it was challenging overcoming confinement and on the other side, it brought in novel opportunities. Here in this article, we describe the various CAS projects undertaken during the designated month along with the subjects involved. Information technology in a global society (ITGS) and CAS collaboration resulted in the development of the e-Library project. The webinar series by students enhanced their critical thinking and communication skills. Under the Ann Dann project for a social cause, students collected huge amounts of wheat flour, cooking oil, sugar and pulses to donate to a charitable organization. Students at individual levels, enhanced their creativity through learning dance, exercising, making masks and many other activities while also remaining occupied.

The Goenkans seemed to be inspired by another quote of Lailah as well: "You will encounter many challenges in life. But you must never be defeated by the challenges" .

Under the able guidance and umbrella of our director principal, Dr Neeta Bali, and with the resilient support of Mr Jinas Panicker, the CAS coordinator, our IB candidates found the confidence to spearhead their initiatives during the CAS month, which have been mentioned below.

Name: e-Library

Project supervisor: Mr Amit Chand

Project leader: Parisha Bhutani

"A library is many things; it's a place to go, to get in and out of the rain, it's a place to go if you want to sit and think. But particularly, it's a place where books live and where the soul of a school lives. We may have to leave the school building for now, but we'll never give up its soul".

For this CAS project, students created an online library, since during this lockdown, many people were unable to access their physical resources or are finding it difficult to collect resources online. So, in order to provide these resources to the students, parents and even teachers, the core team: Parisha, Naman, Rakshita, Elina, Praman, Harsh and Shreya along with six 11th graders prepared a Google drive where they collected and stored e-books, e-notes, past-papers, links to several websites, crash courses for all grades, everything from as big as required IB textbooks to as small as that one equation you just can't understand! It is the one-stop place for all the information one may reasonably require for learning, but be deceived not that this is a service bound only to a few students―this is something for the Goenkan community, by the Goenkan fraternity. Not only have the students focused on academic resources, but to achieve a holistic approach and to make the best out of our current situation, they have included apps and websites where people can acquire a new skill or a hobby from the safety of their homes.

Since this is a CAS project, the students ensured that they completed all the CAS stages to achieve their aim by devising new planning strategies to create a wholesome and helpful working environment for everyone. They also collaborated with grade 11 students for the process to move smoothly and also devised ways to overcome common challenges, such as cooperation and coordination while working for this project, as it had been the most crucial part while working online. The project helped the students become better thinkers and communicators while also developing skills for inquiry and research.

Name: Ann Dan

Project supervisor: Mr Jinas Panicker

Project leader: Ria Arora

The Earth Saviours Foundation is home to more than 500 underprivileged and people with intellectual disability. During this crucial time of COVID-19, they were lacking essential needs like food, clothes and medical aid. Therefore, to help them, the students of GD Goenka World School initiated a CAS project अN Daan, which means donation of food or grains in English.

अN Daan is a food donation drive where essential food items were collected and distributed to those in need. The Earth Saviours Foundation and school staff collected items left in the donation bins at the main gate after a few weeks. The core team played a huge role in promoting the campaign of अN Daan through various posters and videos. They also polished most of their IB learner profile traits of being knowledgeable, thinkers, caring, communicators, balanced, principled and reflective.

The donator was requested to pack a bag that consisted of five items:

5 kg wheat

1 kg sugar

1 kg pulses

1 L cooking oil

Glucose biscuit packs

Their aim was to collect 40 bags of items, but they ended up collecting more than 120 bags! This came out to more than 600 kg of wheat, 120 litres of oil, 240 packets of glucose biscuits, 120 kg
of sugar and pulses!

Name: Mask Donation Project

Project supervisor: Mr Jinas Panicker

Project leader: Ria Arora

Core Team: Saloni Mohan, Aekum Kamboj, Elina Kher, Anya Arora and Harsh Gupta

Service-collaborative and reciprocal engagement with the community in response to an authentic need―this definition was fulfilled with the Mask Donation Project.

The interact club of G.D Goenka World School organized a mask donation drive wherein 1223 reusable masks were collected, sanitized and donated to physically and economically challenged residents of the Earth Saviours Foundation. As COVID-19 cases continue to rise in our country, the public use of face masks has become a necessity. Acting as the only physical barrier to protect oneself and others from the viral particulates, the mask can be seen as life-saving in these daunting times. Keeping this in mind, our interactors organized this drive to provide a high-quality mask to those that require them the most.

The Opportunity in Crisis

Name: The Opportunity in Crisis

Project supervisor: Mr Ramesh Karwasra

Project leader: Saloni Mohan

Core Team: Dhruv Wadhva, Sumer Kaistha, Anika Singh, Nishka Mittal, Jusjeev Singh, Naman Akanshi, Atufa Shabnum and Nandani Kapoor

Another feat of the Goenkans managed to accomplish was finding an opportunity during the crisis to develop the first webinar titled: ' The Opportunity in Crisis' which was held on Saturday 20 June from 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm. This webinar was moderated by grade 12 students and included a session with a guest speaker Mr Deepak Sharma, an NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming) practitioner and a lifestyle and motivational coach. The webinar included a discussion on the best usage of our time at home during the lockdown and ways to convert challenges into advantages.

The second webinar titled ' The best use of Internet during lockdown' was conducted by grade 12 students on Saturday 27 June from 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm. It addressed the impact of excessive screen time on health. Alternatives to social media, video games and other platforms like Netflix were discussed so that students could engage themselves with consideration of their health. Safe usage of social media and cyber-bullying were also covered in this webinar.

The third webinar titled ' The economic impact of the pandemic' included discussion on the impact of lockdown in India, the world's economy and data comparisons of different countries' policies regarding the measures they were taking to cope with the pandemic. Besides, the ways to deal with anxiety and depression during and post-pandemic and the post-pandemic world, was discussed and analyzed.

The Goenkans have made us proud by proving that, " When the going gets tough, the tough get going". When this crisis is over, we will remain proud of how the community came together to help each other and how our young minds thrived during this period.

Dr Manisha Mehta, M.Sc, Ph.D, is an experienced educator and presently working as head of the IB Diploma Programme (DP) at GD Goenka World School in Gurgaon, India. She has been the head of school and has varied experience in coordinating the DP, IGCSE and A levels programs at international schools of repute. She is a DP examiner for chemistry and currently also teaches theory of knowledge (TOK). You can connect with her here.

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Spreading kindness in our community through CAS

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By Dr Manisha Mehta "In any situation, there is a sacred-solution".―Lailah Gifty Akita, Think Great: Be Great! This quote reminded me of the students of our school, who relentlessly kept the true spirit of IB alive through their efforts.