Shown perseverance and commitment with activities: Action

New Term New Running Goals

Last year I was very proud with my running success completing a major personal challenge, running the 10k Zurich City Run under an hour. This year I hope to work on another aspect of my running particularly hill climbs and further endurance. My running partner and I have set a very optimistic target and running a 15-17k run before December. At the moment I I train at least three times a week, either with my partner or alone running approximately 7 to 10km so it will be challenging to increase this but that is the aim. We will also be aiming to support our running by improving our muscle strength particularly leg exercises. 

So far this term we have had varying success with our running plan. It started off very well in September as we had very very mild weather. Melanie and I managed to easily add 3 km to our 10km milestone. We also visited the gym at least once a week to work on muscle strength. We used a muscle strength training plan which I created last year as part of my sports leaders CAS activity. It was often tough to find time to fit in runs but we were creative and turned our runs into study sessions as we recorded class notes and played them on our ipods while we ran.

We had a very busy October but with the nice weather, Melanie and I still managed to average about 14km per run. We got into the habit of running separately however as our schedules became increasingly difficult to work with.

In November was when we started to have difficulties maintaining more than one run a week. Melanie and I both had colds, the work mounted up and the snow began to fall. Our running suffered and we only managed much shorter runs of 8 or 10km. A nice change was I managed to persuade my dad to come out on a couple of runs with me, it was a chance to help him improve his fitness.

December was better we managed to get back into our gym sessions, trying out some Yoga and Pilates but also some time on the cross trainer. We managed to fit in a 15km run and hope over the Christmas holidays to get it up to 17km, fingers crossed.

Overall I am content with our progress but hope to reach our goal!

Considered the ethical implications of my actions: Service and Creativity

Human Rights Club

In September Hailey, Melanie and I were discussing reviving the Human Rights Club we ran two years ago. Inspired by our sessions in the Amnesty International Zurich Gruppe we wanted to find more time to write letters and get people involved. We wanted to put together weekly sessions where people could drop by and write letter to current human rights prisinors globally. We have been doing this for a couple of weeks and have really been enjoying this chance to research human rights victims and take some action writing letters to the Saudi Arabian Government, the Chinese ambassador to Switzerland as well as Human rights prisinors in Iran. One particular prisinor I have been writing for is Ales Bialiatski a prisinor of conscience currently being held in prision in Belarus. After hearing about the horrific human rights abuses in Belarus last year from a activitst at the Amnesty International Zurich Gruppe I have been reading a lot about the political situation there. Ales came to my attention when he won the Vaclav Havel Human Rights Award last september for his bravery and courage human rights work in Belarus which is serving a four year sentence for. 

Writing letters to governments can a intimidating task but luckily I have had a lot of experience with it, participating and organizing Amnesty Internationals Annual letter writing campaign at ICS in previous years. Writing these letters is a skill, you must maintain an appropriate resister throughout no matter how passionate or angry about the situation you may feel. It has to be heartfelt, professional and pressuring while being polite. Writing letters to prisoners congratulating them on their bravery it a lot easier and more enjoyable. What is difficult is sometimes the sense that nothing is happening from the letter writing, probably only 1 out of 10 letters we send ever even get opening. It is important to realize even a small effort is still important. If through our letter writing we can get one politician, prosecutor or official to thing twice about a particular prisoner or case we have been successful. 

Developed new skills: Service

The Duck Race 

On the 31^st of August my friend at ICS, Basia Clauer held her brilliant event raising money for Krebslige Zurich, the Duck Race. The Duck Race was created and organized by Basia herself, the race revolves around selling rubber ducks and having participants dress up and decorate their ducks. 

After participants have a duck they put, the ducks that is, into a giant pallet and finally a crane holds them over the Limmat River in Zurich releasing them to flow down the river, carried by the current. The event involves a lot of organization and so I wanted to help out Basia and her excellent cause.

 I was involved in administration of the ducks, which involved a lot of running around chasing down ducks, taking peoples names and addresses and selling ducks. I also advised participants on their duck dress up! It was a long day in the very hot sun but it was a throughrally enojable experience. Many language barriers faced me as tourists from around the world got involved, it was also challenge to use my German. Often I was doing transactions in German, while trying to take down names and addresses in English. 

Worked collaboratively with others: Service

Room to Read

In July I heard that there was going to be an event in Zurich to fundraise for the Charity Room to Read. I had heard about Room to Read previously at ICS and participated in other events for Room to Read including a "Read-a-thon". On top of the fact the event was run by a charity I am very passionate about it was also based around another love of mine, running. The event centered around a movie called "The Perfect Runner", attached is the trailer. So I got in contact with the organizer Christian and asked him if he needed any help. He replied saying he'd love some help, could I help out with set up, drinks and clean up of the event. 

Here is the press release:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W0TEukG-6Mg

I was excited to help out but also nervous about working with people I had never met. The event was to take place in the HUB luckily with my experience helping out with Shore 2 Summit I had heard about the HUB but still managed to get lost  couple of times on my way there. Finally when I arrived I met all the organizers and got started setting up. It was very inspirational to be surrounded with people who all have busy, demanding careers but still make time to give back. I helped pouring drinks but also with the  raffle. It was a long evening, it challenged me to get involved in working with others who all knew each other very well but who did not know me. Overall it was a rewarding evening which taught me a lot about working with new people in foreign situations. 

Undertaken new challenges and increased awareness of strengths and areas for growth: Creativity and Service

Week in an Unfamiliar Environment and Shore2Summit

For my week in an unfamiliar environment I worked for a Zürich based charity called Shore 2 Summit.  In January I had organized to help a human rights lawyer with her campaign to raise awareness of fair trade products and specifically chocolate. Unfortunately she ended up moving to Singapore so I had to come up with another week in an unfamiliar environment plan very quickly. I researched multiple charities and contacted them regarding summer work. Unfortunately many already had volunteers but I persevered and finally got in contact with Shore2Summit. Shore2Summit mission is “to help improve social and economic conditions around the world by providing a simple way for people to identify short-term volunteer opportunities in their local neighborhoods or in other locations around the world when they travel for holiday or business.” I was attracted to Shore2Summit because their mission really inspired me, I really enjoy volunteering and they offer short term volunteering where anyone can make a big impact. Shore2Summit interviewed me by phone and asked me if I could spend a week, Researching non-profits, NGOs and social businesses that they can market our services to, prepare their new CRM (customer relationship management) tool with existing list of potential non-profits (and new from above research) and create draft new email in MailChimp. These were all very new and foreign tasks to me. I hadn’t ever heard of CRM tools before or worked with Mailchimp so I spent a lengthy period getting to grips with the software and learning the ropes. I met with the founder of Shore2Summit, Jennifer DeMattia and she got me started with all the log ins and information. Everyone who works for Shore2Summit work fall time at other jobs so Shore2Summit is essentially run by volunteers. They didn’t have an office building but met at the Hub, a creative, collaborative space in the Viadukt. After I had been given my task and the tools for it I went ahead and got to work. Initially I encountered a couple of problems with the software but after lots of emails and research I managed to iron most of the problems out. The biggest reoccurring problem I had was communicating with Jennifer and her team as they were all very busy and it was difficult to ask for feedback on my work and make sure I was on track. I really enjoyed learning how to use new software.

Here are some of the softwares I used:

Working collaboratively with others: Creativity, Service

As part of my summer holiday plans I wanted to participate in an intensive German course to help my German.  I went out and had interviews at a couple of different German schools to try and find a match for me. In the end I choose the German school I choose because of the opportunity the gave to outside of their class time meet with someone interested in learning your mother tongue and whose mother tongue is the language you are studying. My Language buddy was George, George was German and was looking to improve his German skills. We met every other day for two weeks just for an hour to talk in English and German. At first I was very embarrassed speaking in German as I found he had to correct me a lot and I had to look up words I didn’t know often. However after a while I really felt more comfortable. After half an hour of speaking German it was my turn to help George with his English. I came to our meetings with vocabulary lists and tongue twisters to help his pronunciation. It took a couple of days to really get into the 30-minute discussions but each one became easier. After a couple of sessions we went over some of the class work we were finding difficulty with and exchange our favourite books in our native language for each other to read. In the first week except for my confidence I didn’t see that much difference in my German proficiency. It also became increasingly difficult to meet as I had lots of plans and George was working. We ended up missing one or two meetings but after two weeks I think we had both made a difference in each other’s language abilities. It was really rewarding to help George while improving my German skills.