Cancer awareness LO6 & LO7

The money that we earned during Movember was sent to the Cancer Patient Aid Association (CPAA) in India, with the goal of helping marginalised communities receive treatment for cancer. This works closely with the SDG of good health and well-being as healthcare should be something that everybody has access to, thus through Movember, we were able to engage globally by trying to increase the access to healthcare for marginalised communities in Mumbai. Although this one event wouldn’t drastically change the world’s efforts towards the goal, we have been able to help a few hundred patients over the last few years that this GC has been running which is one step closer to SDG 3.

Furthermore, within our GC we did a lot of work to reduce the stigmas associated with cancer, and one of our goals was to educate the school community more about that as it is something the CPAA tries to do as well. We realised that this was important as oftentimes in India a lot of people wouldn’t get treatment for cancer or tell their families as there were negative associations. We tried to educate the school community by putting up posters and during Movember really trying to create an inclusive community.

However, to make this possible we had to ask for donations on a weekly basis during Movember which would target the same groups of people, after the first 2 weeks they would get annoyed that we had been asking them repeatedly. Hence, it was important to learn and develop boundaries to know when to stop asking one for donations especially if they had already donated previously. Thus the idea of stickers was developed and we started to sell stickers in which the profits would go towards Movember, coming up with a more creative idea allowed people to get something back from their money making them more incentivised to donate. Therefore, I learnt that instead of targeting the same audience over and over again, it was more useful if we came up with something that we could give them instead. Additionally, we would tell them exactly where the money was going and to which patients which also made them feel incentivised to donate as they knew that their money was being used for good things.

Swimming reflection 2

Over the year we have been doing quite a few swim meets. One of the most memorable ones for me was the water dragons vs dragon fish dual meet we had within ourselves. That was a good meet for me because I made new personal best times (pb) which I was quite proud of. It showed how the hard work that I’ve been putting into training has been paying off.

Another memorable meet was SEASAC, although we couldn’t travel and couldn’t race with the rest of the schools we were still able to race at the dover campus with dover and tts. SEASAC showed me how much of a team sport swimming is even though it is still an individual sport, as you need your teammates to support you and to push you while you are racing, for me that helps me go faster and motivates me to always get better. Many of our team members were affected by covid during the meet and other swimmers had to replace them and swim their events which showed one supportive each other is demonstrating the team aspect of swimming. Although my performance wasn’t the best at seasac as I didn’t make any pb’s, I was able to learn about myself in terms of what is working for me in training and what isn’t. Overall, seasac was a fun experience which I was able to learn a lot from and I am looking forward to the swim meets in the rest of the year.

Video of me swimming