“The Sustainability Drive” was an initiative that had 5 members (including me). It was a project to spread awareness regarding incorporating sustainability into our daily life to make the Earth a better place to live. In this project, sustainability was explored in two ways. First, giving tips on sustainability in day-to-day life using social media, and second, conducting a session on sustainable and hygienic menstruation.
We decided to conduct a session on menstruation for girls from grade 7. The topic of menstruation was selected because while maintaining our personal health it is equally important to know the environmental impact of our actions. We also created an Instagram page named “the_sustainability_drive”, where on a weekly basis we used to post tips on sustainability, on topics like fashion, travel, festivals, etc. We did this in order to share our knowledge with a larger audience base, as most people use social media nowadays and are influenced by it.
LO 1: Identify own strengths and develop areas for growth
Both components of the project included creativity, which is my strength. Hence, while making the presentation and posts, I ensured that they looked appealing and had an equal balance between text and images so that the audience are not bored. While I was good at making presentations, I had to improve my public speaking skills. I have never participated in such activity before, hence I did not have the confidence to speak in front of a large audience. This session helped me develop my area of growth, as I gained the confidence to speak in front of others and improved my communication skills.
LO 2: Demonstrate that challenges have been undertaken, developing new skills in the process
I have never organized or conducted a session before. The first challenge I faced was deciding on the topic, our group had various topics in mind with regard to the environment like water conservation and resource management. But after discussion, we decided to talk about sustainable menstruation because it was a unique topic. This helped develop my critical thinking skills. Another challenge faced was ensuring that every team member participated equally in making the Instagram posts and uploading them, however, towards the end we managed it and developed collaboration skills. Lastly, before our session, we did a mock presentation and realized that the content was less and was very informative. Hence, we planned a game which would keep the students interested in the session. This helped me develop time-management skills.
LO 3: Demonstrate how to initiate and plan a CAS experience
Before executing the project, for almost a month we brainstormed different ideas on what topics can we cover through this. In order to make a presentation on sustainable and hygienic menstruation we used Canva and google docs to plan the content. Along with this, for the Instagram page, we planned and discussed the logo and the posts. For this, we used Canva and google chat to communicate with each other.
LO 4: Show commitment to and perseverance in CAS experiences
During this project, I demonstrated perseverance. Throughout the project, we as a group had clashes of opinion and issues regarding participation in the group. However, I was persistent and showed commitment towards the project. In addition, I showed commitment by completing my work on time if I was assigned to make the poster on Tuesday, I would be ready with it beforehand so that changes could be made. This helped the group not lack behind and achieve the goal of posting daily.
LO 5: Demonstrate the skills and recognize the benefits of working collaboratively
Working collaboratively is normally easy for me, but for this project, it was a bit difficult. This was because of differences in opinion, time issues, meeting issues, etc. However, working collaboratively helped us because we were able to divide the tasks. For instance, diving the 5 work days in between the 5 people for creating the posts, so it is easier and less time-consuming. Through this, I understood the benefit of working together and further developed my collaborative skills.
LO 6: Demonstrate engagement with issues of global significance
The global issue we discussed was the destruction of the environment and personal health. Issues like changes in climate and weather patterns, air pollution, etc. are a result of human activities that in future would impact the health of humans. It was important to talk about sustainability hence this project was started. As previously mentioned the project aims to include sustainability in every aspect of life hence we posted sustainable tips every day, including sustainable travel and fashion, sustainable menstruation, etc. These small changes can create a huge difference thus, we raised awareness and attempted to change people’s choices.
LO 7: Recognize and consider the ethics of choices and actions
While creating the posts for Instagram we could have used the available posters on other platforms related to the topic, which would have made the work easier but we decided against it. We took an ethical choice and created the posts on our own using Canva and gave suggestions and researched the content.
Final takeaway:
The highlight of this project was getting positive feedback from the teachers that were part of the session and the viewers who commented on our post.
Learner profiles developed: Communicator, Thinker
Evidence:
