19 April, 2024

TedxBISB

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Championing Change – Inspire, Innovate, Impact

We are proud to announce that a successful and inspiring TedEx event was held at our school. It was a pleasure to listen to talks from brilliant speakers who shared their innovative ideas, experiences, and insights. All the event was led by our skilful students.

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“It has been 5 years since the last TEDxBISB event and those who have done it before have left the school and those who haven’t couldn’t really remember how it was done. Therefore, it was all left up to students: us. I, Linda, as the lead organizer and one of the hosts of the event together with Henry as the second lead organizer, photographer and tech person have put all our strengths, time and effort together to organize a public event with 7 different speakers each from a different field of expertise talking about the theme: Championing Change – innovate, inspire, impact and most importantly with an audience full of students, teachers and parents of BISB. In addition to honorary guests like diplomats and ambassadors but also people that have nothing to do with the school but people who have learnt about the event through our public marketing. It was an incredible experience for all of us and I personally have learnt an incredible amount of skills. My role was more logistical and communicational which is how I as a 17 year old learnt what details are necessary for an invoice and when, where, who and how taxes are paid.  I have written so many e-mails in the 5 months of organization of the event as never before. Balancing the event organization with an outstanding academic performance was the biggest challenge but teachers were amazing in understanding and supporting us. In between the speakers we had break activities lead by our student leaders like Macarena to make the audience move more and yarn connection to show the interconnectedness of the audience. One student also gave a cello performance to let the audience relax. We also organized a refreshments and networking break where we provided food and drinks and student leaders had workshops prepared to let the audience interact with the topic of our TEDx event. Organizing an event with 100 attendees, food, drinks and activities around it has been so much our more work than anticipated but I am grateful for every second of it as this was an experience and learning opportunity that I will remember forever, and I am grateful to the school, teachers and staff to have given us this opportunity.“ – Linda (lead organizer and host)

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"Organizing our school's TEDx event was simply put, extraordinary. It wasn't just about planning an event; it was about bringing our community together to share ideas that matter. I remember one particularly nerve-wracking instance when a speaker had to cancel last minute. It was a test of resilience, but I pulled together, found a replacement, and he ended up being even better. Through it all, I discovered a newfound resilience within myself and a spark of excitement at every step of the way. Leading the team behind it all reminded me of the power of collaboration, the importance of communication, and the joy of seeing inspiration light up in people's eyes." – Henry (lead organizer and technician)

“The journey of planning and participating in this TEDx event was quite interesting for me. At first, I was just a part of the workshops team because there was such high demand to be a part of the main organization team. Slowly I became more and more involved in planning the workshops, so I took on the role of leading and organizing all of them along with the break activities. As I attended the regular team meetings, I became more involved in the planning of the event itself and became a part of the core team. I had to learn how to bring all the departments together and delegate roles to the student leaders to make sure everything was organized and got done, while caring about the general event details as well. I was also in charge of managing everything backstage while the event was going on. From making sure everyone had their roles assigned, troubleshooting if anything went wrong, to decorating the spaces. It was an amazing learning experience where I got to find out the amount of preparation that goes in to planning such an event and the execution of the event itself. I am extremely happy I had the chance to be a part of the TEDx team.” – Tamara (organizer)

One of our students even acted as a speaker:

“Speaking at TEDx was a very rewarding opportunity. Through this, I got to learn something new, acquire new skills and develop those that I already had, which made this experience truly worthwhile. I got to research the relationship between the gut and mental health, which is something I find very interesting and would not otherwise have done. I spent months preparing my speech; reading academic articles, and scientific journals and creating countless drafts of the script. Despite some challenges, I got to learn how to better understand complicated academic literature, which has helped me as a student. This opportunity has allowed me to learn a lot a develop new skills, however, there were also many complications throughout the process. The most challenging aspect of this was, that, unlike the other speakers, I had very little experience in the area that I was going to talk about. Luckily, in the end, it was all worth it as I was able to present my ideas as well as I could have and have also really enjoyed the process of doing so. In the end, in spite of all of the challenges that came along the way, the feeling of being able to share my passion with an amazing audience made it all worth it.” – Martina (speaker)

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Please check our speakers in the photo gallery: