Throughout my experience at UWC, I have dedicated a lot of my time to service. During my middle school years, my service was Urban Gardening which I enjoyed because I was able to make new friends from it and it made me feel like I was doing something for the school community as some of the crops we produced was given to the cafeteria. In Grade 9, my service was Boomerang Bags. I much preferred this service to gardening because personally I’m a lot more passionate about its mission. The purpose of Boomerang Bags is to promote using re-usable bags rather than single use plastic bags as it is more sustainable. UWC has taught me a lot about plastic pollution, particularly in the ocean, and it has made me become rather passionate about the issue. In the service, we worked as a group to make re-usable bags out of donated fabrics which were then put in the school shop for people to use free of charge. I am proud to say that I was a committed member of this service and I hope I have contributed to decrease the use of single use plastic.

Despite my past experiences with service at UWC, this year I want to try something different. After our assembly about service, I feel inspired to do something I haven’t done before as I only have three years left at UWC. My last two services have both been dedicated to helping the environment around us, but now I want to dedicate my service to helping the people around me. I would like to do a college service which allows me to help other people in my school community. The service I would love to do this year is arts and crafts with the younger students. I think this would benefit both me and the children I would be working with as it  builds a strong sense of community and closeness within it.

I am looking forward to another year at UWC and I hope that I will become part of a service which promises me something different to my previous years and it will make me feel somewhat like a change maker.