Month: November 2020

The first stages of planning Project Week with my group went smoothly. We met in D520 to discuss our roles and formulated a plan. I felt that I could use my skills to help organise the group and volunteered to lead us.

Roles:

Logistics Officer/First Aid: Shruti

Action Leader: Prad

Service Coordinator: Minayo

Media Coordinator: Cui Chen

Minutes Taker: Albert

PW Book Producer: Li Zhongrui

We emailed a representative of the New Hope foundation and found that we would be unable to go to the Beijing unit as it was closed. Instead, he offered that we could visit and stay at the care center that they ran at Luoyang, Henan. The aim of New Hope foundation is to takein physically handicapped babies and provide them with a caring and secure environment to provide long-term care in as close to a normal home environment as possible. They also aim to seek out the best medical solution to facilitate their treatment.

Initially, we faced a lot of difficulties in communicating with the representative of the Luoyang unit as we did not get an email back after sending several and we were approaching the internal school deadline for confirmation from a GC contact. However, we took this in stride and continued to attempt to get into touch with representatives. Finally we were able to get ahold of a contact and confirm our trip and everyone in the group was very excited to play and interact with the kids at the foundation.

Unfortunately, we got a email from our GC contact in late January which informed us that they may not be able to accomodate our visit at Luoyang Show Hope Special Care Center in June as planned. They shared their recent newsletter and  told us that it was dependent on the funding they received in the next two weeks. We were all very understanding and wished all the best for the foundation. However, we had to regretfully cancel our visit due to the unpredictability as the school had required us to submit a concrete proposal by a deadline that had passed. This sudden cancelation left us all very worried. We had all formed this group because this trip had appealed to all of our interests and goals for Project Week.

This was (by far), the biggest challenge that we had faced so far. However, we all attempted to persevere. We began exploring any other options that were available to us in the moment. We faced a lot of disagreement during this process. I, along with the others, accepted that we all might have to sacrifice our preferences slightly so that we could all decide on a feasible trip. After all, there were only a limited number of options available to us. We kept in constant touch with Ms.Toth who helped us with our situation. Ultimately, we decided upon the Free The Bears project located in Cambodia, Phnom Penh. I was really pleased with how we all communicated and took the situation in stride. After this, the rest of our planing process went very smoothly. (Our planning document: 7 Free The Bears, Cambodia)

Unfortunately (once again), we were then faced with the COVID-19 pandemic. Things looked uncertain again, until we were finally told that we would be unable to make any trips this year. While I was undoubtedly disappointed, I also understood both the personal and global implication of travel during this time. I was in agreement with the school and believed that both they and the government had taken the appropriate action in response to the pandemic. The choice of travelling would not only affect us (who were making the trip) but others around us as well. As young students, we needed to keep in mind the vulnerable population who was more susceptible to catching the virus.

Project Week is an integral feature of the UWC experience. As students, it gives us an opportunity to develop our own skills of leadership, planning and inter-communication beyond the walls of our school. Even before grade eleven, outdoor education has been a constant and defining feature of our educational programme. However, what makes Project Week special is that small groups of students each plan our own trips from scratch.

Whilst I was really excited to be able to take on the responsibility of organising my own trip, something I initially found quite challenging was finding the group that I was going to go with on Project Week. The trip my close friends were wanting to plan revolved around activities that I (truthfully) was not interested in. This worried me because whilst I truly wanted to do something I was passionate about on this trip, the idea of going with people that I didn’t know made me very nervous.

Nevertheless, I persevered and took the tough decision to not go on this trip with my group of close friends. Instead, I began to explore other opportunities. Ultimately, I ended up starting a conversation with three other grade twelve students from the global concern – Smiles of China – that I was a part of. We discovered, that we all were interested in doing the same kind of things and made a plan to visit our global concern for Project Week. Two of the group members even invited two other students from outside our global concern to join our group for Project Week. Regardless of the fact that I wasn’t close with these students from before, I began to realise how happy I was that I chose to take a risk and join this group. As we began the process, I was able to meet and become friends with a new set of students.

In the end, collaborating with one another, helped us all to achieve our desired outcome: to be able to plan a Project Week experience that both interested and challenged us. Having taken this risk, I really felt as though I have taken a step forward in being able to embrace rather than shy away from difficulties. In the future, I hope I can continue to develop this growth mindset.