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. 

Increased awareness of strengths and areas for growth: Creativity and Service

Around May it was announced that towards the end of the year there was to be a couple of days to celebrate the arts. We were given the opportunity to come forward and volunteer to put on arts related workshops for the younger students. I volunteered along with a friend to put on a 3-hour workshop. First we had to research to work out what we were going to offer to the students. I sat down with Ms. Caroline to discuss a couple of ideas I had for my workshop and she advised me to pick something easier as she wanted me to teach the Kindergarten. I was quite apprehensive at teaching a very young age group especially as I didn’t know them or really their abilities. I spoke with my partner and we put together a “My Family and Me” themed workshop. First we were going to introduce ourselves and then we wanted to set about asking the kids about how to draw people and the different characteristics and components that they needed to include. I am not particularly artistically talented by I really did enjoy putting together the workshop as it challenged what I normally plan. I had never done anything like it. After introducing drawing people, we wanted to get the kids to draw their families and then eventually we would get them to tell us what components go in a house and ask them to draw their home. We thought it was probably quite a ambitious plan as it would be difficult to get the kids to go into a large amount of detail. As a precaution we prepared coloring worksheets to keep the kids interested. We wrote down our plan for the two-day arts fest, then sought out the equipment we needed. On the morning of the first arts fest day we were both very nervous. I am a fairly confident public speaker in front of my peers and teachers but teaching and talking to much younger kids was unchartered territory for me. We played some icebreaker games to get to know the kids and I made it my goal to remember as many children’s names as possible. The plan was a success, we had some teething problems at first as some children didn’t know what to draw and some finished really quickly but after a while we both developed a skill of coaxing the children to add more detail and use more color. It was really nice to be involved in teaching the younger student especially since they were very interested and looked up to us. I enjoyed being creative and coming up with ways to keep the kids interested like singing songs and playing games. After three rotational classes over the two days we got better and better at teaching the workshop and I think its safe to say it was a success.

Planned and Initiated Activities: Action, Creativity and Service

The concluding task of our sports leaders course was to plan, prepare and execute a sports day. We were divided into groups negotiated between groups over who would run what sports day. The options were the kindergarten to 2^nd grade sports day, the 3^rd grade to 4^th grade sports day or the 5^th grade to 7^thgrade sports day. Personally I favoured planning the 3^rd to 4^th grade sports day as I thought it would be the easiest to run due to the very close ages of the children. I felt like the older the child the more competitive and therefore the more difficult to run. However many of my group wanted to run the 5^th to 7^th grade sports day and so we went with that age group instead.  We were given a dead line in June, only the week after our exams and I was worried that might lead us to put off planning until last minute. Luckily we remedied this by trying to get all the work done as soon as possible so we could focus on our exam preparation. It was really nice to work in a group, as I don’t really get the opportunity to work in a group at school any more. My group were very friendly and we didn’t have many problems with dividing the workload easily, everyone wanted to pitch in.  At first the task itself was rather daunting how were we going to plan the day, organize the teams, keep the day to the plan? The questions were endless. My job was to organize the teams into house teams equally both age and gender wise which at first I thought wouldn’t be too difficult. It ended up taking much longer than I had anticipated and I had to consult one of the PE teachers, Ms. Ruez to confirm that there weren’t any major problems with the divisions I had made. She advised me to move a couple of people around to make the houses better balanced and then I set to work dividing up the houses into teams. Once I had done that I came back into the group to discuss the games to play. We had a quite lengthy discussion over each of the games but we all took it in terms, voted on which games to play and created a sound plan of the day. I was very proud that we managed not to have any arguments and get the job done. Some problems we encountered while drawing up the playing rota was trying to make sure no team played another twice. In the end we had to settle with a rota were everyone play everyone twice. Once we had done all the planning for the day we handed the portfolio into our sports leaders supervisor, Mrs Osbourne. On the Friday before the sports day after a long time of not thinking about our plan we had a brief group meeting and organized ourselves into pair to set up and run each game. Kunchok and I choose the obstacle course and on the Monday morning of the sports day we set up and ran the game. The game was fairly smooth with only a few problem regarding scoring and penalties. During games if we felt a team had cheated we ended up adding time penalties to their score to try and deter any bad sportsmanship. It was a long and hard day but in the end I was glad all our planning had worked out and the kids had enjoyed their sports day. I think I learnt a lot about dealing with large groups of kids and how best to tell of and reward the kids.

Supervisor Forms

Increased awareness of my own strengths: Service and Creativity (Student Council)

I have had a very busy year so far with student council. I began 2013 forwarding one of my election goals, putting more emphasis on the house system. After a series of meetings with both Ms. Butterworth and Mr. Findlay we put out a campaign to find independent, dedicated and professional members of the student body to run for the position, head of house. This we decided was the quickest way of getting more done with the house system. With students in charge we hope change will soon be on its way for the house system. We went through a 2-step process to find the best candidates for head of house. Interested parties first had to write an essay on why they believe they should be a House Captain, what leadership attributes they believe they have and what changes they would like to see. Secondly we went through a interview with each candidate to follow up. It was a very time consuming and stressful process. Trying to organise for everyone to be at the right meeting, at the right location and the right time took many emails and many more personal reminders. However in the end we choose 4 people for the positions and so far I am exceedingly pleased with the choice.

The next step I decided we needed to take after appointing people to the roles was to introduce them to the student body. I think when through a long process of trying to put on an assembly. Eventually I found a date and a time that worked. It was a very successful assembly I believe. The sports leaders made a good impression, my speech was clear and loud and we even managed to fit in some student musical performances, which was very nice.

Although student council has been going well it has been a very time consuming job. The next task I got onto was organizing two dances for the middle school. Firstly a spring fling for the 6^th and 7^th grades and then a disco for the 8^th grade.

At our weekly meeting we picked a date and got organizing however some of the grade representative got mixed up with some of the dates and we ended up having to chance the first arranged date due to lack of preparations.

It was second time lucky I believe. Much smoother and much more efficiently I spent a lot of time preparing, emailing and discussing the dance. Luckily with much effort both went to plan, the spring fling taking place on the 12^th of April and the disco on the following Friday the 19^th of April.

My final challenge of Student council precedency took place today when I gave my farewell speech to the student body:

It seems like a long time ago since I was up here last year asking you along with Alex for your votes. I would like to thank you for giving me the opportunity to represent all of you this past year. Because of course without you voting I wouldn’t be standing up here. I speak on the behalf of both Alex and I when I say it has been an honour to represent the student body throughout our presidency.

This time last year I must admit I felt wary of the task ahead of me hoping I could fulfil everything Alex and I promised to you. Over the course of the year I am pleased to say we got many more of you involved in the student council through the events, sports and tech committees. We proposed a formal budget be put in place for the student council and with much help from our treasurer Diederik we have been granted exactly that.

Alex and I have tried to put more emphasis on the house system. Although this process has been slower than we hoped we believe we have secured you a future with more focus on the house system by interviewing and choosing grade 11 students for the head of house positions.

I would like to thank both Sarah our secretary and Diederik our treasurer as well as our student council grade representatives for their help over the past year especially in organizing the many dances we put on.

Something I have learnt from the student council is that it is just as important to have dedicated grade representatives, as it is to have a dedicated executive committee.

Many of you sitting in front on me now may not see the importance of the student council, you may not see our work and what we achieve, much of it is happens in lunchtime meetings, lengthy emails and  executive discussions. I am highly subjective of course but I believe there is a great importance to the student council. Our elections at ICS are truly democratic. Being part of the student council teaches life skills such as public speaking, organization, leadership and teamwork. I hope as you listen to the speeches today you take into consideration the importance of the student council and it’s role at ICS.

Finally I would like to thank you the student body as well as Ms. Butterworth, Ms. Cambell, Mr Findlay, Mr Mcharg and all the many other teachers who have helped us achieve what we have during our presidency.

Engaged with issues of global importance: Creativity and Service (Amnesty International)

I have been actively attending the amnesty international English speaking local issues group in Zurich. With this group I have been lucky enough to attend seminars on a wide variety of international human rights abuses. One that particularly struck a chord with me was on the last dictatorship in Europe, Belarus.

I had never realised the full extent of horrifying human rights violations that happen there on a daily basis. The presenter of the seminar was an expert on Belarus who has been to the country 3 times at the risk of jail. Since leaving the troubled nation the human right activist has been banned from ever re-entering.

On top of these seminars I also had the opportunity to participate in a flash mob that took place in Paradeplatz to raise awareness for the war atrocities happening in Syria at the moment. Initially I felt quite embarrassed at having to dance out in the open but I was convince I should do it because of the cause I was supporting. Day after day hundreds are being killed in Syria, the news rarely reports these killings and people are forgetting. This event was done to put the conflict back in people's minds.

Before each meeting I write a letter to send to a political prisoner being held against his/ her will without fair and just trial.  Then at the meeting we exchange letters and sign them before sending them off. This is part of Amnesty internationals Write for Rights campaign.

Below is an example of one letter: