UWC Adriatic students get three GoMAD grants this year
GoMAD – “Go Make a Difference” – grants are a UWCx initiative that, starting in 2001, support UWC students wanting to have an impact on an issue they feel strongly about. Every year students submit projects and selected initiative get up to 1000 $ to put their mission into action over the summer.
This year as many as three UWC Adriatic projects were selected and students are getting ready to reach their destinations and get the ball rolling. Find out more about each project below.
Second year students Eline (The Netherlands) and Anastasija (Serbia), building on prior volunteering experiences in Nepal and Hong Kong respectively, are going to Nepal to work with children from disadvantageds backgrounds who have scarce educational opportunities. Their aim is to make these kids aware of their potential and improve the physical conditions of their school in Nawalpur, in the Lumbini area in Nepal, at the Shree Gyanoday Higher Secondary School. They will be collaborating with Bharat Wasti, a local volunteer for a Dutch NGO based in Napal. The project will start on June 1st and end on June 30th and will involve a 5 day ice-breaking trekking experience followed by the painting of new school premises and renovation work on older parts of the school, as well as the creation of a library or a computer-lab. At the same time Eline, Anastasija and three first year volunteers from UWCAD (Amanda from Brazil, Laura from Italy and Hugo from the Czech Republic) will also run workshops on critical engagement and creative activities.
Second years Jose from Argentina and Jose from Mexico have always been especially mindful of the situation of migrants and be traveling to the Mexican city of Tenosique in order to collaborate with La 72 a shelter for migrants whose name is in memory of the 72 south American victimsof the San Fernando massacre in Tamaulipas in 2010. The project will be implemented in two stages: from July 8th through August 8th Jose G. and Jose T.will be involved in humanitarian aid work, also promoting the migrants’awareness of human rights. Their efforts will also be directed at the local population of Tenosique, to make them aware of La 72’s activities and to promote a peaceful demonstration in favour of changes to migration policy in the country. The second stage of the project, ending in December 2018 will be aimed processing the material they will have collected to document their work in Mexico in order to raise awareness about this humanitarian crisis beyond central and north America. They will collect extensive video footage and will make a documentary aiming to dismantle the dehumanisation of the plight of migrants, whose stories and individuality are often lost under a plethora of statistics and economic data. Given the specific nature of the project, volunteers not speaking Spanish could not be involved but our Joses will need help from their UWCAD friends when the documentary is prepared.
Sara (Lebanon), Mustafa (Syria) and Bashir (Egypt) are going to Lebanon to train refugee teenagers so that they may develop the skills required in order to identify and make the best possible use of online educational opportunities. Both Mustafa and Bashir have first-hand experience of how life-changing it can be to stumble into an educational opportunity on the Internet. The three project organisers are very much awayre of how important it is in such cases to be able to write effective and attractive presentations, including the management of photos and video attachments that can best support the applicant. They think that they can bring this sort of help most effectively in Lebanon, a country with the highest number of refugees per capita in the world, which has taken in 4 times more Syrian refugees than the whole of Europe since the civil war broke out in 2011. The threesome will go to Aley, on Moutn Lebanon and in the Bekaa Valley, organising a 4-day workshop as well as making short presentations in various locations around the country, involving a large number of UWCAD fellow students. The workshops will deal with how to find educational opportunities online as well as free educational resources. They will also teach participants how to express themselves most effectively online, as well a show to write CVs, cover letters and make applications. Developing the photography, music and visual arts skills of participants is also one of the workshop aims. Significantly, a Skype conferencecall will also be made to a Harvard admissions interviewer. Participants will also be asked to tell their stories on video, so that a documentary can be produced to raise awareness after the project is over.
