LO7: Getting our Fundraising Products Approved

LO7: Recognise and consider the ethical implications of choices and actions.

Being with Daraja Academy Global Concern since I was in Grade 6, I’ve been involved in most of their sales days or events where we have tried to fundraise. The product that we would most often fundraise with are these hand-crafted bags that we would buy in bulk every time someone from the team goes to Kenya. Although this was working fine for us for many years, our school has released some new fundraising policies that requires us to make some big changes this year. Through their newly designed vetting process, my school wishes to make Global Concerns held accountable for any unintended consequences of how we are sourcing our products. For example, the bags could have been designed poorly paid labour.

Coming to realise that I truly had no clue about how the bags were made and whether they were sustainable really opened my eyes as to the other things I was ignoring. As such, I was quite excited to embark on this journey of getting a new fundraising product for our service.

Currently, our 2 highest contenders for potential product alternatives are:

  1. Coffee Beans from African Coffee Roasters
  2. DIY Natural Soap from Raw Beauty

Coffee beans from African Coffee Roasters  are from 5 African countries, Kenya, Ethiopia, Rwanda, Uganda and DR Congo. It is produced in the first certified coffee roasting facility in Kenya and the company is completely transparent in their production process in order to ensure good working conditions and high product quality. However, because the manufacturing facility is all the way in Kenya, in spite of it being a good product that will meet high demand in Singapore, the amount of pollution generated from transporting it so far made create large negative implications in the long run.

On the other hand, Raw Beauty is a service group working within our school campus and has been doing their own investigation into how they are sourcing their dyes and other material so that the soap they can create will be sustainable from end to end (since students who signed up voluntarily are making the soap). It also has a decent cost of production because we would incur no cost for transportation and Raw Beauty is requesting a manageable amount of the ingredients. In my opinion, compared to the African Cofffee Roasters, the DIY soap from Raw Beauty seems like a much more realistic solution that would still generate a good amount of demand from the school parents.

I’m looking forward to continue pushing the team through the application process. Even though we may not raise money this year, the effort we’ve put into this application process will allow us to sustainably fundraise for many years in the future.

LO7: Understanding the basis of meaningful change

LO7: Recognise and consider the ethical implications of choices and actions.

As the Vice-Chair, my responsibilities in Service and Sustainable Development (SSD) Executive expands over a team called the “Sustainable Enterprise Consultants” that I played a lead role in kick-starting. The ideology of this group is to reinforce the concept of a ‘triple-bottom line’ so that students are more conscious about the social, economic and environmental impact of their actions. The context that we particularly focus on here is the ethical considerations of the fundraising process for Global Concerns as it is always more than just about making the most money.

Often, Global Concerns (student advocacy groups for international partnerships) choose to fundraise with products that have a low cost and unverified methods of production, which could create negative implications on the various stakeholders involved in the end-to-end process. For example, there was a group that would buy bags in a bulk volume whenever they went on service trips to meet their partners and sell them for a marked up price to make a profit. Although their partner was benefitting from increased sales, the labour that was used to manufacture those bags could have been exploited to work for extremely low wages and have a poor standard of living. These unintended consequences are important to factor into the process of doing service so that the impact can produce sustainable development in the long run.

As such, Sustainable Enterprise Consultants aims to educate students about the ethical implications of their choices and actions by requiring layers of researching, documentation and pitching so that students are held accountable for how they are sourcing their fundraising goods.

Looking forward to implementing this in my own Global Concern called ‘Daraja Academy’.

LO6: My Daraja Academy Experience

LO6: Demonstrate engagement with issues of global significance.

Imagine a 10-year-old running around trying to advertise for a mere pizza sale that’s for fundraising money towards an organization dedicated to bringing free education to less privileged girls in Kenya. That was me when I first got a whiff of what it’s like doing work with a goal that is greater than myself. The organization I was advocating for is called Daraja Academy and I was part of a school service club that had the purpose of learning about their cause and fundraising for them. I joined this club to stretch my systems-thinking ability to issues outside of the immediate community. Year after year, as I built a stronger understanding of the issue of women’s right to education, I started getting more creative when ideating ways to bring us closer to achieving our fundraising and advocacy goals. In the countless zoom calls with the girls currently studying in Daraja Academy, I was learned about their lifestyles and how the curriculum of this school had been shaped to best help them overcome their challenges and received education to grow. 

Through this information and the mountains of other facts, figures and stories we found from doing our own research, it was eye-opening to look further than the tip of the iceberg of the complex issue of gender inequality. This shifted our mindset behind fundraising such that educating the public of these circumstances became just as, if not more, important than raising the most amount of money. While hosting our events, we build long-lasting connections that will be useful towards growing our global concern in a sustainable way for many years to come. I’m so thankful for the opportunity to have grown up working with this advocacy group. Look forward to similar adventures in college.

LO3 & LO6: Starting CDM

LO3: Demonstrate how to initiate and plan a CAS experience.

LO6: Demonstrate engagement with issues of global significance.

 

In Middle School, I was a number-fanatic who threw herself at every math-related social group she could find to get inspired. I was drawn to the way math gave us a language to navigate on an abstract level and create patterns between seemingly unrelated areas of knowledge. However, it was all too often that the cold dismissive eyes, which glossed over me, made me feel unwelcome. Of course, it’s the typical “I was the only girl there,” but the intense competitiveness of the bickering groups of boys at every table apart from mine, grew this seed of doubt in my mind where I saw myself as one step behind everyone, simply because I didn’t fit in at the time. 

Fast forward to me in Grade 10, as I started talking about my experiences in my friendship circles, I began to identify people who either had a similar experience or saw the effect of this doubt in their peers. This was how I realized that there was a need to combat stereotyping and discrimination in the preexisting clubs, leading me to identify peers that formed the initial team for the Community of Diverse Mathematicians (CDM). This issue of commonplace stereotyping and prejudice within mathematics right from elementary adds a layer of subconscious bias in every single person, irrespective of whether you love maths or not. It was important for me to recognize this and understand that this is a diversity issue within the field of mathematics that likely deters many from being a mathematician every day. The club began problem-solving within the framework that there needs to be a culture shift. This was why we decided on advocating for an inclusive community that encapsulates diversity not only through the lens of race, gender and age but also within the knowledge and applications of the subject. I believe that it is important to highlight the open exchange that maths has with all facets of life and how each person has a valuable opportunity to become a better global citizen while gaining broader knowledge in this field. 

When I started this unofficial club at the beginning of the year, as a team of 3 girls, we deliberated about the philosophy of our group and recognised trends in behaviour that caused the underrepresentation in each of our individual experiences, such as how a lack of support from peers when pursuing interests can lead to taking less initiative.

Recently we welcomed our first male team member and it was interesting to learn that he shared our observation on the need to enrich the diversity in mathematics, especially on the ethnicity front where all the groups he worked in before consisted of only Asians. Shortly after, we even invited a middle schooler to the team because we recognized that it was important to have their perspective in order to create a genuine cross-divisional impact that may support a future culture shift. 

To provide some perspective on the vastness of mathematics and create inspiration about the future in this field of study, I helped the team muster the courage to write emails to subject-matter experts like Niel De Grasse Tyson and Greg Anderson. Although we have already received a number of rejections, I am driven to continue pushing our hopes of one day removing the countless stereotyping of math.  Currently, I am working to improve the email structure that we’ve drafted and send emails out to more accessible people around us like UWC parents and teachers. I strongly believe that with persistent effort, we will be on our way to hosting a successful conference. 

We plan to make CDM about providing students with a networking platform so that they are more confident when pursuing their passions due to the supporting curiosity and zeal from their peers. My experiences in this club have inspired me to continue exploring this complex issue and better appreciate mathematics as a social construct. 

LO6: CDM 2021, UWC East’s 1st Ever Conference to Celebrate Maths!

LO6: Demonstrate engagement with issues of global significance.

Who are we? 

We are 5 UWCSEA East students who have assimilated due to a commonality of having observed a lack of diversity in mathematics at our school in some way, shape or form. Specifically, we have observed two layers of the diversity issue, which we have chosen to centre a conference around: 

  1. The gender, ethnicity and age imbalance is prevalent in a majority of the mathematical social groups in our school. 
  2. The lack of awareness about the diverse range of applications for the mathematics taught in school may demotivate students from actively engaging with the subject in classrooms. 

To create a change in the fundamental approaches to mathematics as a subject, it calls for a cultural shift that reframes it in a new light right from the get-go. As such, our mission outlines objectives that we use to guide our plan for impact and how we build our community to best make it accessible to students. 

Mission

The CDM conference aims to create an inclusive and encouraging platform for younger students who are still developing their passion for mathematic activities to explore and have the opportunity to build their confidence, initiate the development of skills, and expand their knowledge on the applications of math, all under the support and mentorship of role models in the mathematical community across the world. 

The 2021 Conference

On the Saturday morning of June 5th 2021, we put together and facilitated a virtual conference consisting of 35 participants, called The Community of Diverse Mathematicians (CDM).

We had three workshops organised on the topics of Probability and Statistics, Artificial Intelligence and Geometry in Origami, where students were given the opportunity to learn from field experts in an interactive session filled with problem-solving exercises and critical-thinking discussions. With the hope of having sparked a new line of interest among the students, they were also provided with resources on how to further their involvement on the respective topic outside of the workshop.

One of the main strengths that were seen in this conference was the engagement the students had right from the beginning. They were willing to be proactive in answering questions from the speaker and engage in discussions with their peers irrespective of differences in age. Evident from the positive feedback we received, students thoroughly enjoyed the collaborative element and even suggested extending this time for conversation in the future. Other suggestions included ramping up the difficulty of some concepts explored, in order to push themselves outside their comfort zone and inquire further into their new-known found interest. Hopefully, through an in-person conference next year, the speakers can tailor their content and advice by having one-on-one conversations with the students. 

To further widen the scope of our impact and reach, we are also strongly considering adding a competitive element where they have the opportunity to apply the skills and concepts they learn from the workshops. This will also allow students to engage in much more in-depth collaboration and critical thinking with their peers and may even result in the ideation of promising ideas that could be pursued as a project further. Another key element that we wanted to focus more on is creating a sophisticated networking system for UWC East students, starting from Middle School, to support them in finding others with similar interests to embark on self-initiated projects and exploration related to STEM.

To execute these new ideas and plans, we also plan to increase our team capacity so that this one-time event can be transformed into a year-round movement that can be a valuable platform for students throughout the year. 

We are all extremely excited to welcome even more people into the Community of Diverse Mathematicians and propel a culture shift in UWCSEA East. 

 

Contact Details: Feel free to reach out to us anytime through our social media handles listed below!

Instagram: diverse.uwce

Email: diversemath.uwce@gmail.com

LO2: Final couple of weeks of working on the robot

LO2: Demonstrate that challenges have been undertaken, developing new skills in the process.

As Captain of Construction, I was deeply involved in the designing, prototyping and assembling stage of the robot and learned many new skills throughout my journey on Team Wall-East.

In the beginning, I led the team to conduct research on the mechanisms used by existing FRC teams so that we could expand our knowledge of possible solutions. Later, after we were waiting for our parts to arrive by post, we began our designing phase. We took compiled the range of possible mechanisms we could use and started drawing potential combinations that could be realistic to build and would help us in achieving our desired functionalities. One challenge I experienced during this stage was that it was taking too long. Our sketches kept on having to be revised as each of our ideas had a strong likelihood of having an unignorable flaw.

Through discussions with Mr Zobrist and Mr Dunn, I pivoted our strategy so that rather than drawing hypothetical configurations, we were building tangible prototypes that we could test under various conditions. To do this, we used components from a company called Vex Robotics, which were essentially miniaturized versions of the parts that we had ordered so that we could easily assemble and disassemble them.

Soon, once the materials had arrived, we had a strong idea going into the building of the actual robot of what mechanisms would be feasible for a beginner team like ours. While I wouldn’t say that it was continuously a smooth ride thereafter, I believe that we were better prepared to tackle roadblocks and think creatively using the limited resources around us.

Later in our robot-building journey, we needed to start testing the robot on whether it met the required criteria from the competition manual. I worked with Mr Zobrist to build the game circuit, which included components like a 10ft tall target made from scratch. Here, I learned about the various tools that humans had designed to help make engineering easier and how their creative invention had made it possible for us to produce massive structures like the target.

The experience from start to end was truly inspiring and made me more confident in my choice to continue pursuing engineering in the future. I’m beyond excited to immerse myself into the rich collaboration in engineering-related careers and regularly have the ability to ideas to reality.

LO1: FRC Robotics First Meeting

LO1: Identify their own strengths and develop areas of growth.

This year is the first time that there is a robotics team here at UWC. I signed up for the FRC Robotics team because I felt that I had experience in quickly picking up skills related to STEM and was genuinely interested in learning more about the robotics industry that is on the rise in society. Also, as I had done Design and Technology for 5 years, I felt that I had strong skills in AutoCAD and design, which could help me have meaningful conversations/discussions with my peers on how to improve the robot.

Today was our first meeting. I was both really excited but also nervous because I knew that the idea of developing our own robot was no small feat and I wasn’t sure how the team would be making this first step towards such a big commitment. When I entered the DT room, I noticed that there were 5 G11s in total and the rest (10-12) were G9s and G10s. It will be interesting to see what kind of skills and knowledge they have, which I can learn more about and develop my skills.

When I saw videos of robots made by other FRC robots online, I realised that the hesitation I was feeling towards getting started on building our own robot was something I needed to overcome. As a possible area of growth, I think that this may help me to grow as a risk-taker and build an experience taking calculated risks. I look forward to seeing how this will make me more confident among my peers and deepen my interest in STEM.

Service and Sustainable Development Executive (LO5) – Season 1

Growing up, I had initially viewed service as a mandatory aspect of school with little to no connection with my one true interest, mathematics. Year after year, I recognised the importance of the issues but undermined the ability of us students to make an impact. When I entered G9, I felt an urge to become a more active part of my community and push myself out of my comfort zone. To put myself forward to represent my peers, I ran for student council and managed to get selected. While I was thrilled for that one year, the next year was an ordeal as I failed to get elected. Shattered at the thought that I wouldn’t be able to continue the amazing work being done in Student Council, I started looking for other doors to represent the student body. Then I was introduced to the Service Executive, where highly motivated and passionate individuals come together to discuss and take action upon making someone else’s life better.

When I found that I had been given the position of Vice-Chair in SSD Exec, I was thrilled at the idea of being part of the team paving the path for the entire service program of our school. Given how intensive the workload that comes with this responsibility is, Season 1 passed by in a flash.

LO5: Demonstrate the skills and recognise the benefits of working collaboratively.

Throughout Season 1, I felt that LO5 was particularly important in order to not only get the work done but also improve morale and productivity among the team. Something I noticed was that the system we had of designating a different aspect of the service program to a small group of 3 or 4 students made each of the team feel like they played a crucial role in the team and were actively contributing to discussions during the session.

When we were preparing for the Giving Tree event, it was amazing to see how efficient we were in sending out around 25 emails and calendar invites. On the day of the actual event, all of us sorted hundreds of goods into the various local services that our school partners with. It was a big learning point for me about the benefits of collaboration and delegation.

Badminton Training Reflection #2 (LO4)

Badminton Training Reflection #1 (LO1 & LO2)

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