#1 – Future Brighteners
International School of Panama, Panama
Room 737
Essential Question:
Why might education founded on moral values be the most essential tool for our future generation?
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Workshop Description:
We are a group called Future Brighteners and we are doing a project called Teach Me How to Learn. This project is in our sister school. We go and teach the kids every Wednesday and we use different methods to introduce new moral values each week. Starting with an introduction to fables and the message that they portray underneath, we started a unit of moral values through things that the children enjoyed such as games, plays, drawings and even songs! These are the subjects we concentrated on each week and how we worked on them. Come to our workshop to learn how to incorporate these types of lessons into your own educational projects.
Plan for Sustainability:
We have made our project sustainable by doing several fundraising activities. We are planning on promoting awareness and growing the community´s education in a positive way with values. We also encourage other students to join our group so later on it can be passed on and kept going to teach the next generations. We hope that in 5 years the project will be continued by new generations who join GIN.
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#2 – Defeat the Meat!
Colegio Franklin D. Roosevelt, Peru
Room 742
Essential Question:
How can reducing the amount of meat and animal products decrease climate change, and other environmental issues?
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Workshop Description:
Join us to discover the hidden truth of what the REAL cause of climate change is. We will show you how the meat you consume and agricultural businesses are depleting our natural resources and contaminating our world and the health of all of us. In our presentation you will be exposed to the effects from meat production, that include: water waste, land and water pollution, carbon dioxide release, and more.
Plan for Sustainability:
Our solution is to bring awareness to our community by creating meatless days, incorporating more meatless options in our school cafeteria and staring campaigns around our community related to this issue as well. We will ensure that this solution will be sustainable, because we are passionate about this topic, and are already staring to have meetings with our schools catering company to bring more vegetarian and vegan options to our campus. To make this long term, we are going to talk to the head of our school to make a meatless day, every week, mandatory in the cafeteria.
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#3 – School Garden
Santa Cruz Cooperative School, Bolivia
746
Essential Question:
How can we set the example to the student body on how to take advantage of our own school grounds to create a garden that provides for the less fortunate?
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Workshop Description:
Starting on last year’s GIN Conference, the Green Club at SCCS, composed of members of the SCCS Gin team, decided to plan a prototype garden in our own school grounds. This was the first attempt, besides Recycling, of the student body taking action in the place we visit every day: our own school. Besides this attempt, no one had ever wished to create something as impactful as a garden that would later be used for donating purposes. Our team decided to start a compost garden that would grow herbs, tomatoes, lettuce, and other seeds that would have everlasting effects, not only when they finish growing, but on the impact of our school. With this project up and running, the student body was not only amazed at what we were trying to do, but they started to care. When eco-friendly events are not popular in a high school, students forget about its importance. The Green Club was our first effort to raise awareness on an important topic that affects all of us.
The Compost Garden is located in the pasture area close to a big soccer field, where students spend most of their afternoons. Seeing something like that really opened up their eyes and they even approached us to get information about how to help. The garden was surely an experiment to get physical results, such as the plants and vegetables, but it was also an experiment on the student body. With this, not only will the garden continue throughout the years, but we have already noticed that it created a domino effect in the conscience of our school because other eco-friendly clubs have opened and people are no longer indifferent towards the subject.
Plan for Sustainability:
Our project will be sustainable because, even after we graduate, the Green Club has already established group rules, strategies, and terms. The garden will also continue to flourish because we are going to create a partnership with the Cancer Corp SCCS; without each other both clubs will not function. The garden will also continue to be an initiative for different members to take over along the years. Since the garden is already there, students will continue to become interested in raising awareness for the environment. The most important part of our experiment lies in the consciousness of the student body. Once someone starts the reaction, everyone follows like a chain. Santa Cruz is not a city where too many initiatives like this take place; therefore, this is a first step into a plan that will conquer the school grounds. Our green club project will not only help the school and the companies we create a partnership with, but it will also raise awareness for the improvement of our surrounding environment.
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#4 – Educação XXI
Graded School, Brazil
Room 749
Essential Questions:
How can students at an international school work to implement the concept of a socio-emotional based education that prepares children for later life in the city of São Paulo?
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Workshop Description:
Our workshop focuses on implementing concept of a socio-emotional based education that prepares children for later life in the city of São Paulo. By focusing our efforts on a Brazilian public school/ creche, we are working with less fortunate students who often times come from socially and economically unstable backgrounds. Through fun and informative activities, we hope to teach students important skills such as public speaking and how to deal with conflicts which are essential to the 21st century. Workshops will be selected according to age group and are all geared towards helping them acquire skills and information that will allow them to get betters jobs and become self sufficient in the future.
Plan for Sustainability:
By having two freshman in our group, we hope to pass on our ideas and project to the younger members who will take over once we graduate. We hope our group will always consist of upper and lower classman to ensure that the connections to the school and passion for the project will continue to carry on long after the founders graduate.[/su_tab] [su_tab title=”Student Film”]
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#6 – Dragon King International English Teaching Project
International School Nido de Aguilas, Chile
Room 720
Essential Question:
How can we establish unity within a community by bridging various gaps?
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Workshop Description:
The emphasis of the workshop, that will be explained in the following statements, is to demonstrate that the most pressing global issues are found in your immediate community rather than globally. We strive to make a difference in the world. The notion is that in order to make a difference in the world, you are not bound to travel abroad because sustainability starts with taking initiative in your own community. We will talk about how, as international school students, we often go to very wealthy schools adjacent to a much poorer neighborhood. In the case of Chile we noticed that the custodial staff and their families wanted to learn English and we have the resources to bridge the gap. Through the Dragon King International (DKI) project, we seek to bridge the social gaps between these two communities. By sharing our story with other international school students, we hope to introduce an organization that can be implemented in countries all around the world.
Plan for Sustainability:
The DKI project is inherently sustainable because it focuses on teaching English to local people and therefore we teach a skill that lasts and is therefore sustainable. Once we have implemented the basics of English the students will have the ability to further practice their skills. Additionally, the custodial staff will implement their new gathered knowledge because they are surrounded by an environment where they will use the skills every day, by being able to communicate with staff members. Also, we will teach them to be brave while practicing language and then they will forever have the opportunity to pursue their English speaking abilities.[/su_tab] [su_tab title=”Student Film”]
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#7 – Project Girl
Carol Morgan School, Dominican Republic
Room 735
Essential Questions:
Why are there few girls obtaining an education in the Dominican Republic; how can we empower them to continue their studies, pursue their dreams and break the cycle of poverty?
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Workshop Description:
The Project Girl DR workshop will address issues faced by girls in developing countries, focusing on those related to early pregnancy and education. By participating in our workshop you will gain a deep understanding of the challenges that come with growing up as a girl in a developing country and at the same time learn more about how you can help.
Moreover, you will learn about our project, which consists of empowering and educating teenage girls in an impoverished community of the DR, Batey Lechería, to continue their studies and pursue their dreams. Project Girl DR aims to build strong relationships with the girls we work with and forge a bond with their community in order to effectively start a movement and empower them to break the vicious cycle of poverty.
Plan for Sustainability:
Our project is highly sustainable because it focuses on starting a movement within the community of Batey Lechería and the girls who live there. Project Girl DR focuses on education because it is one of the only things no one can take away from you. We hope to work with these girls closely and consistently enough that they are truly empowered to create a change in their lives and community in order to break the vicious cycle of poverty that they’ve grown up with. This year we will also focus on recruiting younger members from the school community so that they may continue the work we started with the girls at Batey Lechería.[/su_tab] [su_tab title=”Student Film”]
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#8 – Suicide Hotline
Lincoln School, Argentina
Room 744
Essential Question:
What would you do if I told you I was going to kill myself?
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Workshop Description:
Goals of this project include creating a hotline, staffed by local psychologists, to help people in need.
Plan for Sustainability:
Due to various complication with the Argentine government, our current plan is to employ crowd-funding, apply for grants and contact other non-profits to create a network between hospitals, psychologists and potential victims to facilitate the prevention of suicide and the treatment of depression through therapy.Content 1[/su_tab] [su_tab title=”Student Film”]
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#9 – The Ecospace
American School of Recife, Brazil
Room 734
Essential Question:
How can we explore interdisciplinarity in an interactive natural space?
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Workshop Description:
Many educators report the effectiveness of school gardens in their students’ achievement, attitudes, social interaction and other psychological benefits. Children and youngsters of school age in metropole cities need places where they can get in touch with nature in order to more fully realize their physical, intellectual and emotional development needs. There are many theoretical and practical scientific studies on the benefit of school gardens for various educational purposes. Thinking about this we decided to develop a special classroom where students and teachers of different disciplines could interact and explore plants as a source of information on chemistry, languages, biology, environmental science, drama, arts, history and geography. We created this Ecospace in order to teach the children the importance of recycling material and how to work with many disciplines in a cooperative way. The plant species were chosen in a way we can explore the meanings of each botany family as healing plants, fine herbs used to cook and aquatic plants in a central tank with freshwater species of fish. As we live in a littoral city with a tropical climate this is a great pleasure to use space like this to work with the kids.
Plan for Sustainability:
The Ecospace was planned and designed by students and teachers to create an environment used as an outdoor classroom. With the use of recyclable material, we are using old tires to serve as containers for plants that can be used in a diversity of ways. Teachers may program official visits to this space to teach students the importance of plants in our lives as a tool of exploring disciplinary interconnections.[/su_tab] [su_tab title=”Student Film”]
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#10 – Paper Recycling
American International School of Kingston, Jamaica
Room 730A
Essential Question:
Why is the lack of paper conservation around the world such an issue and what steps can be taken to eliminate this issue?
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Workshop Description:
A- The audience is split into a Red Team and a Blue Team. In these teams, they participate against each other in a scavenger hunt for recyclable items (paper, bottles, etc). Ones the items are discovered, the team must sort them into the correct recycling box. The team that completes the task first wins!
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B- In a rotation system of 5 minutes per group of 3, the audience is allowed a chance to try numerous, paper related, mini games. All of the offered activities are interactive and fun for those involved.
Plan for Sustainability:
Right now, we’re tentatively starting our system of paper and plastic bottle recycling. We’ve made boxes to put in classrooms so teachers and students can place recyclable items in there. We’re also trying to educate members of our school by giving presentations and continuously advocating the use of the boxes. Every week GIN members will come after school to collect the items in the boxes. For next year’s members (and this year’s!), we need to continue this system. We think this a great and innovative idea for not just GIN, but for the whole school! This year we’re going to have to take a hold on the school and make sure they know about us, so when they have paper to throw away, they won’t automatically go to the trash can. For the rest of this year and the years to come, we need people to continuously support us in terms of paper recycling and actually recycling paper – not throwing it away. 9th grade GIN is trying extremely hard to fulfill our ideas, and spreading it around the school.[/su_tab] [su_tab title=”Student Film”]
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#11 – Rebuild Nepal
International School of Curitiba, Brazil
Room 738
Essential Question:
How can we improve the long term support of communities impacted by natural disaster?
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Workshop Description:
We launched a campaign to get our school community involved in helping earthquake victims. After concluding the campaign we realized we could not possibly be done and we took a few more steps.
Plan for Sustainability:
We have been able to support organizations working directly with disaster victims. Our partnership turned out to be so rewarding that it lasted longer than we had initially planned.[/su_tab] [su_tab title=”Student Film”]
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#12 – BiblioteCar: Combating Illiteracy in Salvador
Pan American School of Bahia, Brazil
Room 745
Essential Question:
How can we spread the love for reading to the Brazilian future generation, creating knowledgeable individuals who can improve society and have a perspective on their future?
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Workshop Description:
Our project will be a “ted-talk” like presentation, which will be divided in three parts. First, we will talk about the problem, and tackle how the lack of reading habits affects not only children’s academics, but also their perspective on themselves and their future. We will use videos and statistics, as well as a PowerPoint/Prezi presentation to showcase these statistics. Then, in the second part, we will talk about our solution to the problem, the steps we have planned, the ones we have taken, and the next ones we will take. Finally, in the final portion, we will talk about sustainability and plans for the future. In between each section, we will do an activity with the audience that allows them to “”hands-on”” understand our problem, solution, and plans. Those will be a small compilation that showcase what we will actually do with the mobile library in the institutions, so the audience is really able to absorb the meaning of our project.
Plan for Sustainability:
In order to make this project sustainable after the GIN conference ends, we thought about a couple alternatives. One of them is the creation of an elective that can be passed on from generation to generation, with the formal structure of a club. That would be a great idea, as even after we leave the school, interested students will still be building up on our ideas and making the project grow. Another alternative is also to do a partnership with a local organization specialized in education, so they can partake in the project with their knowledge and help run the library. Finally, in order to always have new books come in, is to have the library and Brazilian program teachers sign up for a biannual/annual commitment, in which the books they no longer want that are still in good conditions will be donated directly to BiblioteCar.[/su_tab] [su_tab title=”Student Film”]
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