Tree Planting

In the school there is an organisation called MINGA that organizes social and environmental activities for the students to participate in. One of those activities was a day of tree planting in a town called Lumbisi where the school is very involved.

I was Play Manager and Backstage Director in the secondary school play production of "One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest" for the creativity part of CAS. Along with some other students, we formed a play committe group that was in charge of all play activities except for the actual direction. It involved finding a theatre, getting the set made, organizing rehearsals, making the costumes and many other activities. The play was performed on the 1st and 2nd of April and it was a great success. In total I did around 110 hours.

Girl's Football Team

For the Action part of CAS I joined the football extracuricular, and thus the Girl's Football team. We stay every Tuesday from 3:15 to 4:05 during which we warm up and generally end with a football match. Other activities include football matches with other schools and school tournaments.

Singing lessons and music club

An activity that I am doing for the Creativity part of CAS is singing lessons. This is something that I have been doing for the past four years and for the IB I also joined the school music club. In both of the places where I carried out this activity I've worked on developing and practicing singing skills either by myself or in groups. An important and fun part of singing is being able to perform in front of other people be it as a performance, exam or competition. This was difficult for me because although I don't have stage fright I do get very nervous when performing in front of others. I think that this was a great activity to be involved with and I've learned many skills I hope to be able to apply to my everyday life.

As part of the service area of CAS, I participated in a campaign called Niños Felices. The main aim of this project is to introduce service into the everyday lives of students. It is also to encourage primary students to participate in the campaigns and even students who have to complete service hours to join this project. As part of the aim, it is important to encourage students of all ages to become involved in this project, and to understand why is it important to help others, and also to develop their will and compromise in helping wholeheartedly. This project includes several campaigns addressed to helping poor entities, like orphanages, hospitals and schools. In order to involve as many students as possible in this project, we have decided that a campaing should take place before and for Christmas. This campaign should include: compilation of provisions, materials, and other things that could be needed by the different entities. Also, students who volunteer or are involved in the project will visit the different orphanages or hospitals and every student will be paired to a child. This student is then in charge of providing a toy or a bag of sweets and dedicated to spending some time with the child. We want to emphasize that we have already done this and the results were successful, as students learned from this experience, and the children enjoyed this activity. As part of this project we also hope to create several other campaigns to gather food, clothes, toys, diapers and other things that could help the children at different times of the year. A part of this will also be to plan more visits to the places we work with. During these visits the students can entertain the children with activities such as puppets or movies.
In order for students to know about the campaigns taking place in the school, we plan to send bulletins through the internet and also to have posters around the school that inform students about the main features of the campaign and how they can participate. We would like to work with primary students and send them bulletins to take home, so their parents can be informed about the campaigns and how they and their children can participate. Also we could inform students during the assemblies. We are looking forward to finding interested students to take part in the project not only now but during the next two years, as well as students who want to participate only in some of the campaigns. It is an experience for students that will teach them the importance of helping others and most importantly, it will be a chance to help children who haven’t the same resources as we have.

Dance Competition CopaIN

For the Action part of CAS, I participated in the CopaIN Dance Competition representing the school. We coreographed and practiced our dance for three months and then performed and competed against three other schools. Although we came third, we had a really good time as we were also involved in the planning of the event which was held in our school.

Spanish Play Production "La Princesa Duermesiempre"

I was involved in the first Spanish play production of the school. The play was based on the book "La Princesa Duermesimpre" by Soledad Cordova, an Ecuadorian children's writer. It is about a princess who has nothing in life to be interested about so all she does is sleep. Her father does everything he can think of to entertain her but fails in every attempt. One day the princess goes to swim in the river and she finds an apple tree that requires her attention to survive. Each day she dedicates some time to her tree and as she does so, she falls in love with the royal gardener. The story ends when the King gives them his blessing with the apple tree blossoming behind them. In the play I was part of the backstage crew and I was also part of the play as one of the King's attempts to entertain the princess. I sang twice in the play, once as I tried to entertain the princess and at the end when the princess and the gardener proclaim their love in front of everyone.

CAS

CAS is an acronym for Creativity, Action, Service. This extracurricular aspect of the IB Diploma involves student engagement in social work or community service (Service), participation in sports (Action), and initiative in creative activity (Creativity). The purpose of CAS is to encourage students to go beyond academic pursuits and experience life outside school. Each Diploma candidate completes 150 hours of CAS related activities over the period of the IB course, where 50 hours each are contributed towards Creativity, Service and Action. Students may increase the number of hours in each category as there is no limit, as long as they complete at least 50 hours in each of Creativity, Action and Service to make the minimum 150 hours. The hours of work completed are documented by the school using official forms (CAS/AEF Forms) which are submitted to the IBO by January of the final year of the IB course. The IB Diploma is awarded only upon successful completion of CAS.