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Lights... Camera... ACTIVITY!

I have been talking a lot about the service aspect of CAS but I am also initiating my own activities. For an otherwise lazy Malaika I have recently become self motivated to live a healthy life style. Maybe it’s all the bio getting to my head! I have started running regularly and I enjoy it very much. I come to school when it’s the most quiet, plug in my headphones and run to my playlist of Arctic Monkeys. I don’t want to randomly throw out all these CAS terms and outcomes but the challenge of running for me requires serious commitment! I procrastinate and I am lazy but I commend myself for keeping active. Something I thought would be slightly impossible in my last two years at school. I guess panting after walking up the stairs really did give me a push!

enGLiSh ~ whAt Is iT?

My CAS project for this year is teaching English to the Tanzanian women’s hockey team. The past few sessions have been really fun and I can see them learning quite a lot in the 2 hour sessions. I am teaching them new vocabulary, grammar, and how to have conversations but the major problem I face is that english doesn’t have many rules. Through teaching English I have valued my upbringing in an English speaking home because I cannot find ways to explain something that I find so simple. An example of this is the word it. This is such a commonly used word that every english speaker knows but when I was asked what it meant... I was blank. Denym and I could not find a way to explain what the word meant and when to use it. There it is again... IT! Despite these little bumps along the road I am committed to teach these women English because I want them to be able to go to their international games and be able to build relations with teams from all around the world. As you might have read in my previous posts, I enjoy meeting new people and having conversations but this would be very difficult with a language barrier. Not only because understanding one another would be hard but one might lack the confidence required to mingle!

These are the arrangements that I had made!

FUNtography!

During the GISS conference I was asked to help set up a collage of the pictures taken during the photography ESP and I have never enjoyed an activity that much before! I loved picking out the pictures and colour coding them and arranging the different sizes together. After completing the collage I took a step back and admired the art work, not only of the beautiful pictures but also because I really appreciated the way I had arranged them. I felt very proud of my work and I cam home and printed some of my own pictures and started doing the same thing. It felt like I acquired a new skill and a new hobby!

PUBLIC RELATIONS... SHUTTER

I joined the PR committee because I enjoy writing, meeting new people and have recently developed a passion for photography. Being a 17 year old teenage girl makes me well versed in social media platforms, which is integral in public relations. I thoroughly enjoyed my duties as the leader of this committee however it was harder than expected. I am a very timid person who enjoys sharing ideas however leading a committee required me to delegate tasks and be more commanding. Delegation also meant following up with people and making sure that everything was completed however my trusting nature was my downfall as undone tasks went unnoticed by me. I also see myself as a perfectionist and need things to be done to my satisfaction and this was really hard because I was in a group with many opinionated people which made for interesting conversations but resulted in not being able to come to unanimous decisions thus delaying the completion of tasks. These were challenges that our team had to work together to overcome. By the end of the conference 7 strangers have now become friends through a common goal. We stumbled along the way and now I see that this was understandable considering never having done such a thing before. I learnt a lot about working with a team, overcoming challenges, and perseverance through this experience and I am doubtful that I will ever forget this. GISS is such an amazing event and I am really glad that I got to be a part of organising it. (SHUTTER = A photography pun... Shudder)

#FUNguka

This is a photo I took during the interactive presentation for the vegetarianism workshop!

#funguka

Global Issues Service Summit VEGETARIANISM WORKSHOP

The long awaited GISS conference went by in the blink of an eye. Everyone was so absorbed in their duties, the change maker and keynote sessions, mingling with the delegates, and the service day that before we knew it GISS was over. I was not able to fully participate in the change maker sessions because as a PR committee member I was running around trying to capture moments from all the sessions. However I was able to attend one of the schools’ session on vegetarianism and I found myself fascinated by how little I knew about the subject. The session focused on not trying to convert its participants into vegetarians but rather inform us about the dangers behind the growing meat industry through a well thought out presentation and an interactive activity to further enhance our understanding of the topic. One of the main global issues that this session addressed was global warming. In biology we learn about the greenhouse gases and in Economics we learn about supply, demand and negative externalities however this workshop helped connect the two subjects using this global issue. I think a challenge that I will now face is not knowing what to do with all this information. How should I implement these ideas into my lifestyle and really try to do something? The conference already has me discussing these ideas with several people and perhaps I can start something in a small way like simply having conversations.

#FUNguka #vegetarianism

ENGLISH LESSONS - CAS PROJECT

The SPN (Secondary Parent Network) used to organise mini keynote speaker sessions for the school community last year and this is where I first met Valentina Quaranta. She is the coach for the Tanzanian women’s hockey team and one of the difficulties she faced was that her team wasn’t able to speak english therefore not be able to communicate with any of the other players from other nations. I was so taken with her presentation and what she had accomplished (to know more about her story visit http://www.aisagiss.org/2016/speakers/valentina-quaranta/ ) that I wanted to help her in anyway possible and since the other predicament she faced was financial aid, I figured I could help with the English as an HL lit student. I contacted her and she found that English lessons for the players and the other coaches would be excellent therefore I began preparing for them. The players live quite far from school and were busy quite often with their tournaments therefore initially it took some time getting into the actual classes. However last Sunday I had my first class and I am happy to say that it went well! It still needs a great deal of preparation and adjustments but for the first class, I felt as though we got through a lot of vocabulary content. I have to still be better organised but the Interact Club has decided to help me in this project by not only using some of the funds to pay for the women’s transport but also to help me plan lessons and generate ideas about different ways of teaching. By working collaboratively with my CAS group I will feel more supported and not too overwhelmed by the pressure of having to do this project alone but various ideas can be generated through different minds being put together. I am very excited for the next session, which will take place this Sunday!

This year I decided to challenge myself physically by training for the Kilimanjaro trip that is offered at IST. I am not the most active person but after joining this group I can certainly say that I have never physically exerted myself so much before. There are cuts made after certain activities like the first cut was made in the very beginning of the training. The people who turned in their permission slips late were less likely to get in and some were even cut from he activity. I managed myself well and had turned in the slip before the due date therefore I made it past this first cut. The second cut was made last Friday and I didn’t get cut as you can see in the picture above (I was invited to this meeting). The cut was made after the beep test and it was to test us to see fi we improved on our previous beep test score. The beep test also helped display our motivation and determination as even when you are most tired you keep trying to get to the line. I have never been so exhausted and in so much pain in my entire life to the point where I literally could not feel my legs! But it was “good pain” as Mr. Girardin says because I felt like I had accomplished something by beating my first score.

Stay Tuned...

I will be updating this throughout the year and this is just a snapshot of where I am right now regarding the activities I am participating in!

For GISS, I have been in charge of the content of the website (http://www.aisagiss.org/2016) and I am working with my PR team as well as the Tech team to get the site up and running! This required a great deal of collaboration and through a few bumps on the road, I think that our group has managed to work out a well established system of communication! It is always hard working in a group when everyone has artistic differences and especially personally because I am not as outspoken as some of the other members. This proves to be a real struggle because I am the co-leader but I am developing my skills on how to get my point across as well as being assertive without being overshadowed or too demanding. I could say that I am “stepping up and stepping out!”

These are a few pictures from last year’s basketball event! We haven’t done any project like this as of now but we are planning a swimathon to fundraise for items such as paint, spray paint, etc. for Matthew’s stencil art project. We are really excited to introduce this form of art expression to some of the local schools as a majority of them do not have art programs and are mostly focused around core subjects. We are also planning another basketball tournament for the next semester as we wanted to organise it better and host it on a larger scale (add in other sports, different age groups, etc.)!

Creativity Activity Service

Hello!

I am Malaika Colaso, an IB1 student from Tanzania and this is my CAS blog. One of my service groups for this year is the Interact Club at the International School of Tanganyika. I have been part of the leadership team as the secretary of this club since last year. I chose to do interact again because I feel as though through this club I have a lot of freedom in using my passions and interests to pursue several service projects. I had no obligations to join this group this year as I am also part of the Global Issues Service Summit leadership team but I love the idea of interacting with the local community in various projects such as last year’s basketball tournament and this year’s stencil art project (led by Matthew, the director of projects of Interact) because I feel as though IST interacts a lot within the community and that we need to step out of the bubble. As I had mentioned previously, I am also part of the GISS leadership team as the co-leader of the Public Relations Committee. I chose to involve myself in this committee because again, my passion for writing and communicating comes through and I can use that to pursue various projects within the GISS group. I am also a thespian therefore I am involved in the production of Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Bling (our high school play) and this is part of the Creativity section for CAS. I have always loved performing and theatre always challenges me to take risks and step out of my comfort zone. For my activity this year, I am trying something very new; Latin Dancing! I enjoy it very much and it definitely makes me sweat and work really hard to try and grasp the different moves. It also provides me with a comfortable environment to once again take risks and step out of my comfort zone! As the year continues, more activities will begin and I will be ready to join! I hope to have a fanCAStic year!

#I #hope #to #have #a #fanCAStic #year

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