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Weirdly enough, one of the most memorable experiences is the planning and build-up to project week. The planning gave me a great sensation of excitement mixed with nervousness, and the project week planning was an occasion which allowed me to utilize my leadership skills, I was allocated with roles such as accommodation information, and to guide me through this, I used the help of the ‘Investigation’ stage of CAS. Investigating and narrowing out different options to suit the budget for myself and the group allowed me to be on track of my objectives without straying away. When planning for the project week, we always had the budget in mind, we carefully implemented a few ideas on what the itinerary wants us, as a group we understood that activities that were to be done needed to be progressive and that restricted a few ideas we came up with. We finally, came about with one very specific itinerary which gives us a detailed approach for each day. The activities included sea kayaking, biking, and trekking. Each individual of the group was also tasked with communications for a certain aspect of the trip. For me, it was getting In contact with the accommodation & the activity provider (Wilderness Malaysia). Along with these tasks, I was assigned as the person of my group to undergo the medical and safety course. Safety was a high priority taken into consideration because this was an experience where we were going into a new country as foreigners. At times, there were challenges that we underwent in our group and a key example of this is, deciding on the final destination to go, we often had conflicting arguments regarding destinations and activities that each of us wanted to do. But what made our group unique is that each of us was already very close to each other, so when it came to solving issues, it was easy as we were able to cooperate with not too much difficulty and come to a common solution or rather decision. Even though project week was canceled due to the global pandemic, I think the planning process has taught me a lot of qualities, especially aspects of self-managements which stuck to me till now. I was feeling nothing but proud, excited, optimistic with a touch of nervousness. What a mesmerising time!

Liza Donnelly is a political cartoonist whose work aims to bring criticize, bring awareness of the problems of different social or political issues. She is the author of 17 books and is best known for her works in ‘The New Yorker’ and as a cartoonist of CBS news. Many of the political and social issues drawn by Liza Donnelly revolves around feminism and global women’s rights. She is famous for including humourous points in her drawings, which often hints the harsh realities around these issues, which then brings to resentment towards the readers and ones who are especially involved directly with what Donnelly is trying to bring awareness to.

In this political cartoon, it shows the desperate, helpless and sad situation that many women go through in the modern world today. Although this cartoon does not consist of any style of humor, the piece of work lets us see this issue through multi perspectives of methods in which gender roles & identities are socially and politically constructed. The painting of an Indian lady describing the helpless situation in New Delhi, how they are “forced to live with” violent sexual assaults such as groping,  hostile advances, threatening looks and words, which brings the dark truth out to the surface and exposes the dirty reality inside the country. The painting of an Indian girl not only shows the plight of women in New Delhi but also in other parts of the world such as the US, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Saudi Arabia, the United Kingdom, etc. Donnelly portrays symbolism in order to show the current position of females in society, which is shown by the drawing of the lady. Although the illustration of the black woman may seem normal, the fact that she sat down defenselessly without being able to do anything implies how women are not seen as equals with men and through this, they are treated as the non-dominant side of a relationship between man and woman. Humour is a factor that can be used to ease the tension and conflict within these social and political issues, but at the same time bring out the awareness without going over the line with excessive humor.

My name is Matthew Thomas and I am 15 years old. It seems that as we grow older, our ambitions and goals shift to different things. When I was a young child, I aspired to be a footballer as I was passionate about the sport, it always amazed me to feel the sensation of a ball and the pride in scoring a goal for your team. However, as I grew older the goal to be a footballer seemed a bit non realistic for me. I still continued to play this sport but I chose that I want to enter the field of psychology. Something that I have learned since I was a child is work hard because in life, nothing comes by easy. I lived in India till I was three and then I shifted to Singapore and have been living here since. I think the most people that have influenced are my parents and friends. Everything I am or now, I owe to them especially my parents. My personal aspiration is to be able to build a stable future for myself where I can provide for myself and my family, I also want to be really happy with where my life would be heading by the time I am 20 or more years old. I have chosen this to be my personal aspirations because this is something that is fundamental in life. Honestly, I think to achieve this aspiration I just have to keeping going forward and working hard, if I make mistakes I should reflect about them and apply a new strategy.  

What went well as a group this year?

I think that we became more aware of our actions relating to plastic and we really began to sense our actions committing to global use as well as school use of plastic. I think that is something that really went well for our group which is good and definetly something to start with.

What contributed to those successes, individually or as a group?

I think that individually I really did take actions personally to reduce the use of plastic and when it came to the performance I give out ideas and agreed with others when it came to discussing our different opinions. As a group, I think we made an overall impact on the school even if it was small or big on the broad topic of reducing plastic.

What did you bring in this group and what were the reasons for anything that went well?

I think something I brought in this group was my effort in general and possibly my whole aspect of passion for reducing the plastic.

What didn’t go so well as a group?

As a group, I think we didn’t really plan our strategy out very much and this resulted in some delays of plans for the service.

What didn’t go so well individually?

Something that didn’t go well is the commitment I had for the service because sometimes I could not make it for other reasons.

What do you want to target next year when you come back?

When I want to come back, I want to aim plastic to get more reduced and me coming to sessions more often because I feel like I have something to contribute.

What is your biggest takeaway?

I think my biggest takeaway from this project is possibly the awareness of wasting plastic as a whole. I have learnt importance of this and what effects plastic has on its environment.

Recently, we had watched the documentary called ‘Girl in the River’ which portrayed a shocking yet truthful story of a girl who was a target for an honor killing from her father and uncle.Fortunately, the murder was a failure and the girl had only been injured badly but not dead. To answer this question, we must first understand what exactly cultural relativism is. Cultural Relativism is the principle of regarding the beliefs, values, and practices of a culture from the viewpoint of that culture itself. We are looking at a very serious topic which is honor killings, and when we look at this, I personally think that honor killing should be universal and have nothing to with cultural relativism. There are many places in the world where this is happening today and this cannot go any longer which is why the authorities should start taking serious actions on people who have chosen to go down the path of honor killings. Human rights is very important and that if any human rights is violated, it cannot be tolerated. The violation in this case was article 3 of UDHR which states that you have the right to life. Murder cannot be let gone so easily no matter what the situation is and how you were pushed do it in whatever way.A murder should always face its consequences.