We are delighted to share a blog written by Aamina Mohamed, a student at The British School Al Khubairat who is part of a team delivering a Global Goals project for the 2018-19 Global Goals Competition.
Their project is among over 620 social action projects currently running as part of the GSL movement and we are excited to be supporting them to design and lead positive social change in their community.
Rewarding to see our efforts being noticed by the whole school community and beyond.
Project Overview
Since our last blog, the BSAK Eco Innovators have organised and executed a very successful GSL stall at our school fete where we sold reusable bags, metal straws and bamboo cups. We sold out of everything! It was a brilliant day where we educated many on the perils of single use plastic. We also researched and designed 5 posters which we displayed at the fete.
These posters gave the public information about how to become more sustainable by make small changes to their daily habits and buy more responsibly (we also gave them details of where to buy these items). We encouraged everyone to take photos of them to keep them on their phone for reference. These were a great success.
We also had our second meeting with the architects who came to our school to show us up to date designs for our sustainable dining hall. It was an amazing meeting where we saw all our ideas come to life. The architects had really listen to us and taken on board our suggestions which was fantastic to see. Another success story along our journey.
Our 13 hard hitting posters which we designed to impact our students and parents are now permanently up on the school wall. Everyone has loved them and found them very shocking.
We have also given 3 assemblies this term to tell the whole school what we are doing. This was a rather scary experience but one which we supported each other throughout and gained a response that was extremely positive.
Our Journey
We have developed our negotiation, sales, research and design skills this term. Having to talk to people at the fete was a challenge for some of us but we overcame it by doing things together as a team.
Another challenge we have faced is the negative attitude from some students who argued that ‘one person can’t make a difference.’ It is a disheartening comment to hear. As a result, our teacher decided to write to the legend Sir David Attenborough and ask him for his advice and some words of encouragement. We didn’t think he would reply, but within 2 weeks he wrote back to us with some inspiring words of encouragement! It was surely the highlight of our journey so far to have someone so important like Sir David recongnising our achievements and efforts. To say we were excited is an understatement!
We have all become more confident leaders and our passion to achieve the same goals has helped the 5 of us develop an excellent working relationship.
The Next Chapter
Our next step is to focus on our other chosen goal, Good Health and Well being. We have a string of meetings lined up with senior staff to discuss observing Earth Hour in school, how to spend the money we raised at the fete and we are going to try to figure out a way to reduce photocopying done by teachers in our school.
We would like to end with the advice Sir David Attenborough gave us ‘the battle can only be won if the majority of the human race DO something to help which is why ALL OF US must work together to bring that about.’
The 2018-19 GSL Global Goals Competition is now open and runs until June 2019. If you belong to one of the 700+ teams of students currently delivering a social action project as part of the competition we would love to hear from you and feature your blog and project photos on our website to inspire others.
