Organizing Our Style of Change

Ramadama at SIS has been a long time coming, but how did we get here? This project started out with a simple question from Ms. Laurence: “Would you be up for helping me with the environmental sustainability club?” And what can I say? Marc and I, aka Q11, were up for the challenge.

We got addicted to planning, we had meetings, dished out surveys and got fully immersed in sustainability. Was that our initial goal? No, it wasn’t. We were just going to do a CAS (Creativity, Activity, Service) experience, which is part of the International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme. Yet, the project took on a life of its own, like mold, because our goals just kept growing. Our current goals are giving back to the local community, planting trees, sourcing sustainable football goals and going paperless within the school. That’s a lot to do in just five years, but the 69 members of this club are determined to change the small world that we inhabit, our school.

How did we determine our goals? First, we conducted very democratic and secretive surveys using reused staff room paper as ballots. Afterwards, the three of us, Marc, Mrs. Laurence and I sat down to evaluate the results, realizing that there was an unfathomable pool of ideas in this school that no one had really tapped into yet.

Second, the sustainability survey was another episode in our journey toward sustainability. At the basic level, it meant students surveying aspects of our school for sustainability. But luckily, it meant so much more. It educated students on sustainability, but it also involved non-club members in the meaningful discussion. You had students running all over the place, just shouting out their questions. Sounds quite chaotic, doesn’t it? They were even chasing down our principal Mrs. Bradley-Höllering, just to ask her about the status of sustainability in the office. There was so much excitement. Honestly, the survey results were quite disorganized, but in the end, it was all about making it work, finding out the degree of sustainability of our school and matching the primary idea of sustainability: using what you have. Chaos breeds innovation, just look at startups in Silicon Valley for tons of examples.

Our latest task is finding ways to implement these demands in a reasonable way. How can we even be sustainable in this world? These days, everything you buy comes in a plastic wrapper. It seems there is no escape from the plastic hellscape.

To start small and meet our first goal (giving back to the local community), we organized the Ramadama. Our students swarmed domestic areas and parks around our school and left them clean of plastics, glass bottles, condoms, feces, metal and questionable drinks, to name a few. The entire club is already eager to start planting the trees we will choose, aiming to reach our second goal within the year.

It is really all about doing what you can within your limits, because we all want the same thing: our school to be a lot greener!



Joaquin Sack, Student Year 11