IB Community Theme: Sharing our humanity

Sibling schools and environmental awareness

This is a project that the IB of Doukas School has undertaken as part of the students’ CAS program. The project was designed by CAS Coordinators together with the students, in an attempt to respond to / take advantage of the community theme (Sharing our humanity) announced by the IB.

In the summer of 2007, Greece was plagued by a number of fires. A considerable number of people lost their lives in the fires, houses were burned down and large forest areas were destroyed. This was a natural disaster of unparalleled scope and promoted as such both by the Greek as well as by foreign media. The images of burned landscape and human pain made their way across the country sensitizing the citizens. Probed by such images, our school decided to take on an active role in the relief of the plagued.

As a first step, we contacted the Mayor and School Principal of a village in Elia, one of the districts most plagued by the fires. A delegation of students and teachers visited the school in a gesture of support and encouragement to the people, as well as by means of witnessing the disaster and recording the people’s first-aid needs. Our students had a chance to talk to the students of the area and learn about their experience first-hand. In addition, we were informed by the Mayor about the consequences of these disasters on people’s daily lives. Our aim was not simply to cultivate the feeling of compassion, but to place the students in active roles and to make them realize their own responsibilities as citizens of the country –and the world at large. The students who joined the delegation, in turn, upon returning to the school informed their classmates and asked for their help and support in this project. We are now in the process of collecting funds and goods and planning our following visit to the school.

However, this was not meant to be a one-time charity project, but a serious endeavor in the spirit of CAS. Our plan is for the school at Karatoulas (district of Elia) and Doukas to become sibling schools. We have thus designed a long-term project of student exchange which will involve mutual visits and common cultural activities (in the form of a newspaper, internet forums and sports events). As our students are designing a new recycling program to be implemented in the whole school, we hope that we can run this program jointly with our sibling school. The entire project will benefit students of both schools as it will give all students a chance to broaden their horizons and meditate upon common problems (environmental issues as well as other educational issues).

CAS Coordinators
Margarita Paschalidou
Emmanuela Kantzia

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