Slovakia

October 2015

Our project week consisted of Matej, Frederic, Kathleen, Sara, Aya and Jeremiah. The idea came from Matej’s father, Peter Bilik, who is the head of the parents’ support group in Matej’s previous school: Spojena skola sv.Vincenta de Paul. He had previously highlighted the growing number of school dropouts to Matej and asked for ideas to change this trend. Matej then suggested that a few of us make the trip there in order to have a broader perspective of what the situation is and to then provide ideas on what could be done. Thus, we found ourselves on a train bound for Bratislava.



The rest of us joined this project week for different reasons, but the main idea that resonated among all of us was to have an impact on the education system in the school, to change it for the better. In addition, we also wanted to get to experience different cultures and see a bit of Slovakia and Austria. The cultural background also provided a foundation from which we could understand the attitude of students toward school especially in the light of the communist history of the area. Last but not least, we wanted to get to know each other better, especially since we hardly knew each other before this.



As part of our project week to set for ourselves 10 different learning goals and objectives.

1. Design and pursue a student-led project.


2. Provide a service to an organization/community.


3. Organize activities outside the campus.


4. Explore a new country and culture.


5. Apply and improve the knowledge and skills from lessons and CAS.


6. Improve your organization, communication and collaboration skills.


7. Get to know more about yourself and your group.


8. Share and spread the UWC mission and values.


9. Achieve a positive (social) change.


10. Learn new (practical) skills.

These different goals were definitely achieved through our project week although to different levels in each individual as no two people are the same. Together we designed a student-led project that was meant to provide service to Spojena skola sv.Vincenta de Paul. Part of this service was spreading the UWC mission and values by emphasising the importance of education and the role the students can and should play in building the community. We learnt many things individually and learnt much about each other too. However the one goal that we cannot be fully sure if we achieved is whether we managed to create a positive change in the school. That is something only time will tell.



Our project week was rather straightforward; spend time in Spojena skola sv.Vincenta de Paul each day and observe the programmes and talk to the students. Matej had briefed us that students in the school do learn English but never use it and as such are unable to converse confidently in English. We also had a chance to speak to the school chaplain who wants to change something among the students and we suggested the idea of getting students involved in social service much like CAS in the IB diploma programme.

Sadly, as much as we wanted to do, the person from the school who we were in contact with was not as cooperative as we hoped. After our first day there we were told not to come back into the school again. We had planned initially to spend from about 10am to 3pm each day in the school doing group discussions and providing English help as well as simply making conversation with the students in order to provide encouragement to keep on with school. As such we spent the rest of the project week spending time with Matej’s younger siblings who also attended the same school as well as some children from the neighbourhood.



Our project week to us particularly resonated with our own ideas of education and we felt that we wanted to give others an idea of what education could be like; something that has far greater impacts than merely learning from a textbook. We wanted to use education as a force to empower the students to make a change in their country for a sustainable future - similar to the UWC mission. We also focused on 2 of the UWC values: a sense of idealism and compassion and service. We wanted to show the students in the school that change is possible and that education is something important and we also wanted them to look beyond the walls of the school and to see the needs of their own community.     



At the end, though we could not spend as much time as we would have liked in the school, we still felt that we had made a positive impact on the lives of the few students we had contact with evidenced by the fact that they themselves told us that they wished every class could be like what we had carried out. In addition we also had a continuous opportunity to talk to the children and teens in the neighbourhood and even saw their level of English improve as they made the effort to learn and use the language. Mission accomplished!

Check their video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CzBa7ZJhJZA

Belfast: social-entrepreneurship

October 2015

By Roan, Melissa, Sasha, Camila, Bruno and Nadira

We had the opportunity to be part of an intense social entrepreneurship program in June of this year. As such, we are currently in the process on how to implement the skills we have acquired by creating a sustainable program for young entrepreneurs in school. We would like to learn more on how to deal with the problems faced by the local Maastricht community, especially with youth.

One of the challenges we face as a school is how we utilize our skills and resources for the benefit, communication and integration of the local youth. Thus, listening and learning with people and organisations who have experience in this area would be invaluable. We visited 11 projects and interviewed respective members and got a feel of what they are tru=ying to achieve.

The aim of the project was to obtain information on various social-entrepreneurships in Belfast, Northern Ireland and utilize its knowledge in connecting the UWCM and the local community. Social entrepreneurship is growing exponentially in the city of Belfast, due to it’s constant bureaucracy and political deadlock, the people are taking action into their own hands in addressing the issues which damaging their communities.



These are the main goals we aim to pursue in the project week:

• Design and pursue a student-led project
  
  
  
  • We aim to create a short-film on our short visit.
  
  
  • The skills we acquire will be implemented in the UWCM social entrepreneurship hub
  
  
  
  


• Provide a service to an organization/community
  
  
  
  • The ability to replicate structures and projects that will contribute to the development of new initiatives that will address social problems in the local Maastricht community.
  
  
  • Work in coordination with Belfast-based NGOs and local community groups in obtaining new skills
  
  
  
  


• Organize activities outside of campus
  
  
  
  • Implementing Social Entrepreneurships in the local community
  
  
  
  


• Explore a new country and culture
  
  
  
  • Explore how organisations and projects handle social problems among youth in Belfast
  
  
  
  


• Improve our communication and collaboration skills
  
  
  
  • By working with social projects in Belfast, we will develop how we communicate and collaborate our ideas to those who will benefit from future projects and entrepreneurship
  
  
  
  


• Achieve a positive (social) change
  
  
  
  • As is evident in our previous points, the core of the project is obtain improved knowledge on how to achieve social change in Maastricht, Belfast and other personal contexts.
  
  
  
  

The general program was quite sporadic, as we ad to negotiate different times which suited us and the projects logistically. Our program goes as follows:

• Day 1:
  
  
  
  • We met with Peter Edgar of Northern Ireland Science Park
  
  
  • Explored Belfast with ‘the local’
  
  
  
  

• Day 2:
  
  
  
  • 7am train to Derry!
  
  
  • Morning meeting with Jessica Caldwell at the Playhouse
  
  
  • Lunchtime meeting with the Social entrepreneurship hub Derry
  
  
  • Experinceing the city walls and developing knowledge on the political context of Northern Ireland.
  
  
  • Afternoon meeting with the Fab lab and Nerve centre with Eamon Durey
  
  
  • Quickly back to Belfast for the Civic Conversation: 'Having Wellbeing at the Heart of NI Society' event.
  
  
  
  


• Day 3:
  
  
  
  • Morning meeting with Liam McCusker - Young People Leading Change
  
  
  • Lunchtime meeting with the leadership team of the NOW group.
  
  
  • Afternoon meeting with Mango street smoothie entreprise
  
  
  • Evening meeting with South Belfast Social Enterprise Hub
  
  
  
  


• Day 4:
  
  
  
  • Morning meeting with The Thinking Cup
  
  
  • Lunchtime meeting with the Loca Centre (Lower Oldpark Community Centre)
  
  
  • Afternoon activity - visiting the ‘Titanic experience’ and the murals on the Falls and Shankill road.
  
  
  
  

The information gathered from this project will most beneficial in the creation of the Social entrepreneurship Hub in school. Also, it will help inspire and show others on campus implementation of ideas of SEs can be easily achieved.

Trail of a refugee

October 2015

by Simon, Mia, Orwa and Paula

We are 4 students from UWC Maastricht who are engaged with current issues and have decided to put together a media project about the Refugee Crisis in Europe. The concept is to follow backwards the route of many refugees travelling from Syria. Starting from Munich followed by Vienna, Bratislava and finally Budapest. We call this project the Rail of a Refugee and hope to give a holistic picture of the current situation by interviewing organisation, locals and refugees. Keep an eye on our doings and the project through photos, videos and posts.

For more information check their private blog: https://trailofarefugee.wordpress.com/

Palermo - Tartaruga

OCTOBER 2015

by Eleonora Drago

For Project Week 2015, I volunteered in an assisted living centre house hosting abused women and their children in my city, Palermo. The house is called “Tartaruga” and is run by the organization 3P.

I had already been there last summer, so I decided to use the opportunity given by the school to go on a Project Week in order to work again in this centre. This time I enjoyed this experience even more, seeing as I already knew the other people working there. Some of the guests in the centre were the same, while some were new. Nevertheless, it was not difficult to get to know the new mothers and children thanks to the full programme of activities I helped run. We engaged the children in both outdoor and indoor activities and we tried to involve the mothers as much as possible, in order to give them the opportunity to spend quality time with their kids.



Since the centre is in a big house with a garden, we did all the outdoor activities there. These consisted of sports, such as volleyball, Frisbee and badminton, as well as games involving running or throwing a ball. The aim was to teach the children the importance of an active and healthy life and, at the same time, it gave them the opportunity to get rid of the tension they might have accumulated, preventing it to be manifested through violent behaviours.

My favourite activity outside, however, was the creation of a vegetable garden. This was connected to the theme of the week, which was food education and nutrition. The children and their mothers first chose what kind of vegetables they wanted to have in the garden. Then, we went to buy the seeds and we planted them. Finally, we painted some wooden signs to remember where each type of vegetable was planted. This was the activity I liked the most because of the enthusiasm that I saw in everyone. One of the mothers was particularly passionate about gardening, so she took the role of leader teaching us how to plant the seeds in the best way and guiding us throughout the entire creation of the vegetable garden. This activity is also one, the effect of which will be long lasting, since it will teach the children important skills, such as patience, responsibility, care and respect for nature.



 

Alongside the outdoor activities, we also run many indoor activities, aimed to teach the children new things and develop their thinking and creative skills. Since the theme of the week was food education, we taught the children about the food pyramid and about what to eat and how often to eat it in order to have a healthy diet. The concepts learnt were then applied through games and interactive activities. For instance, children and their mothers were divided into two teams. Each team had to cut images of the different food groups in the food pyramid (e.g. fruit and vegetables, cheese and meat) from magazines and newspapers. Once they had enough, each member of the two teams had to run in turns and place one of the food they had cut into the correct level of the food pyramid. The fastest team to stick all their foods in the correct place on the food pyramid, won. Other activities involved painting, making collages with different materials, dancing, singing, as well as playing board games and watch cartoons.

This experience has definitely benefited me in many ways and allowed me to achieve some of the PW learning goals, such as providing a service to an organization/community, organizing activities outside the campus,  applying and improving the knowledge and skills from lessons and CAS, getting to know more about myself, achieving a positive social change and learning new skills. I learnt many new skills in terms of how to work with children, especially those who experienced violence and abuse. Talking with the mothers, I learnt about many different realities different from mine. I heard stories of violence and domestic abuse and I understood how hard it is to recover after such horrible experiences. Nevertheless, I also met very strong women who had the courage to ask for help and stop that violence for both themselves and their children.



The way these people live together also reminded me of our school. Like us, they have to respect rules, accept other people’s diversity, share their spaces and live together in a very diverse environment. The diversity of the people in the house particularly stroke me. There were women who migrated from other countries as well as locals, women coming from poor social classes and middle-class women. Differently from what I thought, domestic violence is a phenomenon that is present in all social classes and cultural backgrounds. It is something that leaves you a mark for the rest of your life. The aim of “Casa Tartaruga”, therefore, is not to make the mothers and children forget about what happened to them, as this is impossible. Instead, the volunteers try to help them live with their experience and try to overcome it in order to build a new, happier life.

I am proud I gave them a little help in achieving this goal and I hope I will have the opportunity of volunteering in this centre again.

Berlin - Think of the kids

October 2015

Hi! We are Jennifer, Tamar, Johan and Rushil, and this is our blogspot about our Project Week in Berlin, in a refugee camp, taking care of kids. 

We  splitted our team in two: Rushil and Tamar, and Jennifer and Johan, and we had two shifts:  the first from 9:00 am to 4:00 pm, and the second from 2:00 pm to 9:00 pm (which were attended respectively).



Every single day we used to do different things with the kids, but playing with the rope was their favorite activity, apart from the fact that was the most energy-requiring activity and after playing with it, all the kids were tired and more calm. It also worked for teaching them the numbers, counting in german while each kid was jumping.. We also made some drawings with them, played football and made masks for them to use. Our main role in that refugee camp was taking care of the kids, prevent that the kids didn’t fight with each other, and keep them busy.

On the other hand, we also spent some time with adults, who knew a bit of english and made communication easier. They used to play table tennis, play guitar, and also they used to play music to dance. They were making important efforts on trying to be part of the society, by learning either english or german, interacting, and even drawing the german flag

One of the main challenges that we found in that refugee camp was the language. There was a wide variety of nationalities, such as Syrians (mostly), Pakistani, Turkish, Farsi, Moldovans, among others. So, almost none of them spoke english, and as they were in Germany, they were taught German. But nevertheless, we managed to communicate with all of them, by using  body language or also by learning some words in either Arabic, Farsi, Urdu or German.

We also learned about the whole process by which the refugees have to go through, in order to get migration issues done. Every day there were new refugees who arrived, and waited for their documentation to be checked.

We also noticed that the refugee camp was open to all public, so if one day people would like to go and visit the place, you are completely free to go, register, and spend some time with the refugees, which helped them to be more part of german society.
We worked for 5 days, and even though we did not have much time to explore the city, we got to know the most important places. We really enjoyed the trip, and we also learned a lot about the refugees and this whole situation in which they are going through.

Bulgaria I.

October 2015

By: Dasha, Tony, Svetlana, Her, Mesut, Tiffany.

During our project week, we worked with UWC Bulgaria to raise awareness of the UWC program within Bulgaria.  We went to over 13 schools across Bulgaria giving presentations to hundreds of students about the opportunity that is UWC.

We chose to give presentation about UWC to schools in Bulgaria because even though UWC is a big movement around the world, there are still so many people who do not know about it, but have the perfect student profiles for our schools.

Our project week was magnificently important to the Bulgarian UWC National Committee because over the past years there have been very few Bulgarian students who were aware of the UWC movement. For instance, last year there were only 8 people out of the whole country applied and six got in, and this has been a big concern for the national committee of Bulgaria.  However, by us going there, we raised awareness to young students who are eager to study abroad and who have the potentials to become change makers the possibilities of making their dreams come true.   While we were giving presentation we saw so many students who were really interested in the UWC movement so we believe that there will be lots of students applying this year.  



Our week progressed like this:

• We started out in Maastricht, taking the lengthy train ride from Maastricht to Brussels Charleroi airport.


• We set up camp inside the wifi-lacking airport, enjoying expensive sandwiches while being curled up on the cold, hard ground, congregating with the other folks that didn’t have enough money to rent a hotel.


• Early in the morning, we set off through security, a sometimes lengthy process due to the exotic nature of our group.


• Naps were greedily taken on the 20-year-old Airbus as we flew an hour into the future.


• We met up with our Bulgarian mother, found our hostel, dropped off our luggage, and headed out to a highly-anticipated lunch activity; grilled meat one of the greatest Bulgarian traditions.


• We explored Sofia, exchanged our money, and then were swept away to dinner to meet with the national committee; again, the meal was not disappointing.


• We then headed back to the hostel to finalize our presentation; we had our first school meeting the next day.  After a late night, we all crashed.


• The next day, we rose early in the morning to find our first school.  There, in front of a group of teenagers, we stumbled over our message; luckily, they managed to find some sort of inspiration within it, and conversed with us extensively.  It was a great first encounter.


• After the first presentation, we figured out what we needed to focus on and what we needed to cut out; that evening, the powerpoint was polished and so were our public speaking skills.


• Over the next couple days, we travelled by train, car, and foot to numerous schools all over Bulgaria, ending in the pleasant city of Stara Zagora.  An incredibly historic city, we took time to visit the museum before we headed back to Sofia by bus.


• We arrived in Sofia late in the evening, returning to our original hostel; there, we collapsed in the familiar beds.


• In the morning, we dragged Mesut out of bed and ran to the bus station to catch a ride to the airport; we went through the extensive process of security (damn passports) and then we were on our plane home.


• We arrived back in Brussels, and took the long train to Maastricht, with the even longer walk to the UWC campus.  Home again, we crashed before working on our long-overdue homework.  What an incredible journey.