Held this year from 11 to 17 July, student ambassadors at the Summit will demonstrate how their schools have made progress in addressing the SDGs as part of Nord Anglia Education’s annual Global Challenge.
Hosted at Nord Anglia International School New York (NAIS NY), students will join workshops, seminars and debates, including speaking opportunities at the UN’s High-level Political Forum (HLPF). There is also a Model United Nations event, a trip to the UN Headquarters in New York City, and much more.
“We have been thrilled to have Nord Anglia students around the world learning about the SDGs and taking positive actions in their schools and communities year over year,” said Shannon O’Shea, Team Leader: Public Partner Advocacy and Visibility Section, UNICEF.
At BISB we engaged in the SDGs by organising activity days related to each of the global goals.
For Peace Justice and Strong Institutions, we planned a number of activities.
It was announced in Tutor Time that it had been decided to give the Year 12 Student Leaders more responsibility so they would be acting as prefects at break-time and they were able monitor behaviour and give debits. However, it wasn’t announced that they had been instructed, to punish students unfairly. They punished them for breaking rules when they were obviously following the rules thereby highlighting how important it is that we have clear rules in our institutions that individuals are not able to abuse for their own profit or entertainment. We had an assembly to explain the Global Goals and explain the morning's tasks. The process was a big success and they were suitably outraged! Following the assembly they went to their tutor groups and they had 2 activities to do with a reasonable amount of independence. Each class had a trial case to look at that they explored and they needed to decide if the trial that they have been given was fair and if not why not. The students then formed into small groups of 2-4 and made a presentation, poster, short film, poem, song, newspaper article, comic book story or any other form that they thought appropriate to explain the importance of Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions - they could choose to think about all three areas or just choose one and it was entirely their choice. The work produced was of an excellent and thought-provoking standard.
For the Education SDG we had a separate day where everyone saw a Powerpoint. Following this they were asked to do the following:
- In groups of 3 or 4 draw a large outline of a person and think about what qualities and characteristics an educated person might have. Write these within the outline of the person.
- Draw a big circle around the drawing of the person to represent the world. Discuss what the qualities and characteristics of a world full of educated people would be and write these down.
- They then had to think about the opportunities that could open up as a result of getting a good education. They had to come up with a list of 5 opportunities to share with the class and add these to their picture.
- They then brought their creations to the Theatre where they shared their ideas in a terrific discussion with lots of great ideas and points. We had a great discussion and they were really enthusiastic and passionate.
We have also had two students in Year 8, Sebastian and Greg, run a project to collect pens for a local school to enable disadvantaged learners to access school and we had a discussion activity run by our Summit attendees for all of our Year 10s once a week in Tutor Time.