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.

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.