In eighteen short days the students from grades 9 and 10 will depart on a twelve-day community service excursion to Sri Lanka. The island nation off the southeast coast of India, hampered by entrenched poverty and still reeling from a decades-long civil war and the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, is a place of great need. Nearly half the island’s 23 million citizens live on less than seventeen Omani rials per month.
Our students are on a quest to make a difference. Working under the guidance of Habitat for Humanity, an internationally respected organization, our team of ten students will help build a house for a family in need. The work will not be glorious–digging trenches, moving bricks, pouring cement–but it is vital. In their own small way, the students will make one family’s life better.
I’m happy to say that in addition to myself and Mr. Provencher, the team will also be accompanied by Miss Khadija, Heinrich Willis, and Ineke Jansonius. This is a wonderful cross-section of the school community and it will ensure that the students’ experiences are as rich, satisfying, and safe as possible.
The goal of this trip is to make a difference in the life of someone less fortunate than ourselves. But this project has the secondary goal of providing the opportunity for our students to explore their world, and themselves, on a new level. They will be pushed in ways that are brand new to them. There will be stress and frustration, for sure–but what comes out on the other side, we hope, are students more prepared to take on the complex task of being leaders in our global societies. This is no longer a world where rich-nation citizens can simply “see how the other half lives” and go back to a life of privilege. The challenges that will face our children in the coming decades will require an intimate knowledge of human systems and problem solving on local and global scales.
As an IB school we preach these beliefs; our students are about to go live them.
Follow along on their adventure! We’ll keep Broadcaster updated–hopefully daily while in Sri Lanka–with student contributions and photos. And if you’re one of the many people who generously donated money to the trip, many thanks to you. This wouldn’t have been possible without you.