We are delighted to share a blog written by student Anab, from The City School GCA Boys, who is part of team Tech for All, a Global Goals project for the 2020-21 GSL 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.
We are the change and together we make a difference! We think! We act! We win
Project Summary
C’19 and the transformational technological leap is what defines 2020. I am sure this era marks an integral part of every educationist and learner. Fumbling with zoom meetings and Google classrooms is all how it began a year ago. “Am I audible” and “Can you see my screen” are perhaps the widely spoken phrases around our world. Yes there were potholes every now and then…but it didn’t stop us. We embraced the challenge and began an exciting journey.
New platforms and tools resurfaced everyday and we jumped in head first. The skilled educators and IT team made it possible to make this transformation worthwhile. After few months, I realized that not everyone is a PRO!. Nor were there ample educationists to quench the thirst of many who were trying to waddle in shallow technological streams. The moment was now! To impart what we had learn…to give it back to our community and what better way than to empower our youth with the technological skills and tools.
As a school, we joined hands and vowed to give back to society. Teach the under privileged teens! Make them Future ready! Microsoft ‘Tech4Good” made it possible with their Service-learning challenge. Research forms show that there were students in our community who had no clue what MS Office was…and were extremely interested in Word, Excel and PowerPoint. The teams of exciting volunteers decided to train these enthusiastic minds and impart #Quality education irrespective of their #gender. The boys of The City School, Gulshan Campus A collaborated with educational institutes “Ali ul Muratza Academy” and “Nature and Nurture Academy”.
The Journey
GSL global goals have open new ways of service learning. During the Pandemic, we learned that we can play our part in the society as a global citizen…virtually. MS teams proved to be an amazing platform. The lessons were conducted on MS teams platform and the link was shared with the guest students in their WhatsApp groups with their School leaders on board. Each lesson was taught with compassion.
Though the students were in limited number, our boys tried their level best to deliver outstanding lessons with frequent questioning. The language barrier was overcome by using the Urdu language as the medium of instruction. It enabled the attendees to walk out of their comfort zone and asked frequent questions. This helped our students to explore their inner talent of teaching and give them a sense of satisfaction when they received the feedback from these kids who were full of gratitude and immensely overjoyed with their learning progress.
Other challenges were poor internet connection and load shedding (a major issue in our city) due to which sessions got disrupted. But to overcome this challenge, we rescheduled the sessions at times and recorded them. These recordings were shared on the WhatsApp groups and feedback forms were shared too.
The Next Chapter
We at The City School GCA have been working on different SDGs from the past few years. In order to bring a change in our society. As youth, we need to work together with our community to achieve the sustainable development goals. This can only be achieved if we equip ourselves with skills and knowledge that can be transferred from generation to generation. We recently did a project on climate action where we planted a number of trees in our neighbourhood and encouraged children to practice organic farming in their homes. Our Facebook group “GCA global warriors of Climate change and Education for all” (created by students & teachers) speaks its cause.
This has a played a major role in creating awareness among our students and other members about SDG’s. We continue to pursue the SDG’S as a part of our hidden curriculum by integrating it in our project work. This will definitely lead our students to become global citizens and change makers of our society. The enthusiasm of volunteers is soaring high and we are ready to engage more students for the cause. Be it online training, planting trees or a lesson on being safe online. We are on a roll.
