Green Umbrella is a GC, or Global Concern, in our school in which we work closely with Green Umbrella NGO in Cambodia. The NGO runs a school in rural Cambodia, offering free education to children from 12 surrounding villages. Recently, GU has diversified and in addition to running a school, they also aim to educate villagers on big environmental issues in their society. I am the chair of the GC (as I have been for the last year) and I am in charge of our GC operations and organizing sessions. This year our GC will have 2 main focuses: firstly we aim to organize an awareness based event in our school to educate our peers; second, we hope to facilitate change surrounding the awareness of plastic use in the GU community. Attached is our formal goal setting.
The most difficult thing to tackle in this first portion of the year was adjusting to the new financial laws in Singapore. These laws prevented us from selling any GC merchandise and raise money for GU. Although raising funds was not our primary objective for the year; the resultant awareness raised by selling items was forgone. Due to this, our school’s Service Expo was canceled and thus we further lost out on informing people about GU.
To start the year, service Executive organized a meeting for all GC Chair to discuss possible structural and operational changes in GCs regarding participation, an update on the financial laws, and more. This meeting allowed us as leaders to collaborate in a way that hadn’t been done before and was a productive and thought-provoking session.
LO4: As the leader and chair of my GC is was extremely important for me to be committed and attend all meetings, including those organized by Service Exec. I had to be able to replay any information (especially regarding the financial disruptions) to the rest of the group.
LO5: As we enter an uncertain portion of our GCs operation (as we won’t focus on raising funds) it is important that we can rely on each other as a group to work in an efficient manner. I, as the chair, have been able to delegate tasks to the group members and set up mini-groups to focus on a separate element of our overarching goal.
LO6: It is clear that we are working towards an issue of global significance. In the UNs SDGs education is not only highlighted once but twice. As we help the Karuna Kumar School we aim to make education more accessible to people in rural Cambodia and, in turn, assist in communal development.
LO7: I had to make many ethical considerations and consider the implications of our actions when I set our goals with the group. It is clear that the work we do here deeply impacts the Karuna Kumar School, thus, we must be highly considerate when it comes to goal setting.
