Workshop Session #2
Workshop #2: S.O.S Beach Ambassadors
Global Issue: Maritime safety and pollution
American School of Recife
Learning Center 1
Essential Question:
How can people minimize the impact of pollutants on pristine beaches all over the world?
Impact Statement:
We, the S.O.S Beach Ambassadors, have triumphantly implemented the beach cleaning project in Pernambuco’s coastal areas for the last 7 months. We started our project in August and intend to continue our aid. We’ve been collecting trash at Paiva, Porto de Galinhas and Muro Alto beaches, while raising awareness amid the American School of Recife community. While collecting trash, we had found several rare species that are in extinction. Paiva beach, is rich of brown seaweed, which is a bioindicator species and it means that the water presents a good quality. Using as many volunteers as possible, we comb the beaches, the reefs and the coastline for any and all trash and have collected about 300 Kg. We also talked to the fishers, and explained them our project. Overall, our impact has been advantages to our community, and the communities we have serviced.The S.O.S. Beach Ambassadors is a group of six girls from the American School of Recife with hopes of minimizing the impact of pollutants on pristine beaches all over the world. The group has successfully implemented beach cleanups through Pernambuco’s coastal area for the last seven months. The project was born in August 2017 and aims to minimize the impact of pollution on marine life and encourage communities to fight against the effects of trash on marine life and humans.
Our goal is to spread our ideas among other schools across the globe through social media. Beach Ambassadors have created an Instagram account as an effective tool to reach out to more people not only in our specific location but throughout the world. Thus, aiming to encourage more individuals to become new SOS beach ambassadors.
Our future goals are to create an app and to continue spreading environmental ideas, encouraging other students and groups to start cleanups in coastal beaches across the globe, to become new S.O.S. beach Ambassadors and act beyond boundaries; making beaches safer and cleaner places for all living things.
Workshop #5: Smile Generator
Global Issue: Peacekeeping Problem
Escola Americana de Campinas
Learning Center 2
Essential Question:
How can the community come together in order to raise awareness towards mental health issue and try to decrease depression rates by spreading kindness?
Impact Statement:
We realised that nowadays the media is only talking about bad things ( like wars, political conflicts and crimes… ) so we want to acknowledge the good things that are happening globally. Locally, we are promoting a 1 day “Random Acts of Kindness” and kind hearted actions so they can smile and be inspired to make someone else smile.To spread peace around the globe we want to spread kindness and happiness. We created an website to portray all of that. In our website we will upload videos of kind acts that we have accomplished in hopes that it will inspire others to repeat those acts and continue the smile chain. Our team is setting an example for other to follow. In our website there will also be an available tab for our viewers to publish their acts of kindness and generate even more smiles. Our inspiration to do this project began after we started watching the news, listening to the radio and reading newspapers, because we saw that almost all of the news were negative and only displayed pessimistic articles. With our website we hope to provide positive thinking, inspiration to do good and lots of smiles.
We plan to keep working on our website and are talking about doing a “Random Acts of Kindness” week in the Upper School. We also are planning to reach out to the workers on campus (janitors, maintenance, security etc. so that we know their names) We are inspired by making baskets for the workers- and would like to try to do this for next semester as a Christmas present.
We will explain our research on how people need connection to their communities by targeting the global issue of depression and mental health. When individuals are encouraged to be nice, accepting and caring towards one another, it builds community. To advertise our idea, we created the “Smile Generator” team. In which our main goal is making people smile by small, kind acts, initially around our local community. We made a website containing video inspirations and ideas for our viewers to join in our project.. In our lesson, we will ask about other ways to start connections and spread smiles. We believe that global Issues are directly related to our society and our way of thinking, thus we believe that by spreading kindness people will be more open minded and accepting towards others. Peace won’t be achieved by war, instead it will be achieved by the change of heart in each individual.
Workshop #6: #MyFreedomDay
Global Issue: International Labor and Migration Rules
Escola Americana do Rio de Janeiro
Arena Lobby
Essential Question:
To what extent is slavery still prevalent today and how can heightened awareness combat slavery?
Impact Statement:
We have successfully spread awareness and knowledge about the ongoing crime of human trafficking to the EARJ community and people around the world by dedicating an entire day to CNN’s international project called #MyFreedomDay in March of 2017. The GIN club organized activities, such as a film festival followed by student led discussions, an art exhibition, a station for writing letters to amnesty international, and a session where students stood up in silence in solidarity with the victims of human trafficking. CNN also visited to interview some students.Our goal was to open the eyes of every high-school student to modern-day slavery. We aimed to remind everyone that slavery still exists, and that most of us indirectly contribute to it by supporting brands that utilize forced labor. This fact caused much more intrigue to the subject as it it involved those who viewed our exhibition. It made people think about the daily actions in their lives that could be ruining some else’s, as well as ways in which they could stop their contribution to slavery. Simply raising awareness in order to remind students about the hidden atrocities of our world was the primary goal for this project.