We are delighted to share a blog written by Tresen Ernemann, a student at Sotogrande International School who is part of a team delivering a Global Goals project for the 2019-20 Global Goals Competition.
Their project is among over 957 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.
So far, our experience working on The Global Social Leaders Competition Project at Sotogrande International School has been awe-inspiring!
Project Overview
Hello Global Social Leaders!
We are the M5 Global Citizenship Programme (GCP) students at Sotogrande International School, a part of the family of Inspired Schools in Spain. Our tight-knit team is working hard on a project aimed at sustainability and the reduction of food waste. We are on an exciting journey of leadership, which is enabling us to develop and implement a project that helps us achieve some of the overall objectives of the United Nations. This ambitious and transformative project aims to focus on the sustainable development goals listed below:
Quality Education
Sustainable Communities
Life on Land
Responsible Consumption and Production
Good Health and Well-being
Partnerships to Achieve Goals
We plan to educate our community on food waste and ways to reduce it. To do this, we are meeting with various members of our school community to explore ways we can reduce waste, as well as getting the word out to our students and the wider community using various marketing strategies and social media platforms. With a lack of solid education of food waste reduction in our community, this would be a big leap for our us all to get us knowledgeable about our effect on the planet, our lives, and our respective communities and how we can make a real difference to the world in which we live.
Our Journey
We are developing collaboration and communication skills, by networking with others in our community. We have already engaged in discussions and we know that food waste is caused by lack of awareness. We recognise that the success of our project depends on strong collaboration with our partners. We have spoken to our teachers and students, The Kindred Project team and the Eco School project leaders in order to put our plans forward.
We have also created an action plan where we will be looking at ways to spread awareness about our project to other members of the school community and additionally ways in which we can measure their learning and the social impact of our project. Some methods we have come up with are year group assemblies, emails, surveys, e-leaflet and school newsletters. Our group is meeting regularly, three times a week to work on our project.
So far, we have had multiple ideas of issues we would like to tackle. After reaching our final agreement as a group to tackle the issues of food waste, we then distributed job roles and created a list of jobs that will need to be done. Our group leader will oversee the management of the project. Our school has bought Californian worms and we have spoken to our canteen staff to work out if this is a viable project, for us to work on. This exciting project is teaching us new skills; collaborating effectively on the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals to enter the prestigious Global Social Leaders competition 2019 / 2020.
We investigated the global goals competition and the sustainable development goals through a series of introductory lessons taught by our Global Citizenship Programme Teacher. We have additionally researched the ways to meet the correct criteria for this project. Our biggest challenge is time, but we are confident with our full commitment and support from our community and Global Social Leaders, that we have a great opportunity to learn a lot on this journey about ourselves, our community and the importance of being globally minded, environmentally conscious social leaders.
The Next Chapter
Our next step is to consider our limited resources by working with members of the school community and with local partners to find out how we can sustain this work for the benefit of others.
We also need to consider if there would be any potential partners who could extend our reach such as our schools local partners Hogar Betania and The Kindred Project , Dreaming Dragons and potential garden centers in the local area. We have yet to arrange further meetings with the Cantina staff in order to find out the information required so that our project will succeed.
We do not aim to make our school 100% sustainable but, we can make a big impact through working in collaboration with others to try to make a start on the big crisis. We plan to increase both the use of our permaculture garden and its efficiency. We also need to undertake further research supported by our teacher around the issue of food insecurities. We will also create posters and a video to spread awareness about our campaign within our school community.
The 2019-20 GSL Global Goals Competition is now open and runs until June 2020. 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.
