Term One CAS Round Up
Term one CAS round-up
CAS is an integral part of the Diploma Programme. It encourages students to involve themselves in experiences linked to the strands of Creativity, Activity and Service. It also encourages students to take part in well planned projects where they effectively collaborate with others and attempt to make a difference to the local community. The main focus of CAS in term one has been linked to the 11th and 12th grade EOTC trip to Les village in Northern Bali. Students split themselves into one of three groups, coral rehabilitation, English teaching or salt farming. Once in groups the students investigated and planned the experiences they would undertake in Les village in order to help the community there. Three group leaders have written their reflections about their experiences so far.
In the English teaching group, we were committed to teaching the local children and young adults English. This was as we believe that it is an essential language to learn for future development as Bali sees so many foreign tourists. As a group, we each contributed to helping prepare activities for both children and adults to participate in. These activities included: snakes and ladders, reading English story books, creating worksheets for them to complete and much more. From the lessons we gave, we hope that our students would be able to utilize their speaking, reading and listening skills in their future careers or to communicate with tourists. For next year the English teaching group aims to teach a larger number of students and hopes that they can also learn, improve and expand the English proficiency of the villagers. – Song Hee Chang (11)
The salt farming group aimed to create a sustainable income for local villagers. In one day, a salt farmer can make up to 25 kilograms of salt, but only sell it for around IDR. 150,000. This is a limited income as farmers who need to support their families can not afford to send their children to high school. This was the case with one of the local farmers we worked with. Coming from an international school, we often take education for granted as we don’t realise how hard people work for this. By creating a sustainable income for salt farmers, we are aiming to help more children receive secondary education. Throughout the week, we would wake up at sunrise and begin salt farming at 7 AM for an hour and then at 3 PM for another hour. Whilst waiting for our shifts, students would gather around and discuss how to achieve our goal. We plan to advertise Les Village salt farming traditions through a video and to put salt farmers into contact with prospective customers. For any parents interested in buying the product, our group intends to sell it at the holiday fair. If looking to become a prospective customer, contact us through Kai Koenye, kkoenye17@baliis.net – Adela Aubuchon (11)
During our CAS EOTC week I joined the coral rehabilitation group. We undertook the challenge of cutting and planting coral in a constrained environment where communication is limited. The reason we chose this activity is because we enjoy the coral reefs a tremendous amount. The coral around Les needs rehabilitation because it was dying due to the cyanide and bleach previously used to catch ornamental fish. We planned and prepared a structure and cut small parts of live coral and brought them to the underwater coral nursery where we set up our rope structure and planted the coral. We found out that our structure could not support the coral growth as the material is unsuitable. In order to keep contributing to this project we plan to use a more suitable material such as concrete mixed with calcium carbonate and to support coral growth when we return to Les next year. By rehabilitating the coral and attracting tourists we hope to create additional income for the local village to be able to continue this project. – Zen Anderson (11)
Matt Wood – CAS coordinator
