SDGzine Special School Edition 1

#1/

SPECIAL SCHOOL EDITION JUNE 2020

INTERNATIONAL SCHOOL OF GENEVA SWITZERLAND

9innovate.

24 SDG research projects and local action ideas from over 140 9th grade students

#1/Health

1.1 Water Sanitation and Hygiene and Reduction of Preventable Diseases 1.2 Mental Health 1.3 Malaria 1.4 Obesity

#2/Sustainability

2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4

Soy and Deforestation Sustainable Consumption Disposable Plastic Food Wastage

#3/Peace

3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4

Literacy Levels and the link between Violence and Peace The Use of ICT in Peace & Conflict Conflict resolution Gang Behaviour and Lasting Peace

#4/Technology & Innovation

4.1 Digital Disconnection 4.2 Drones as a Force for Good 4.3 AI & Electric Cars 4.4 E-Waste

#5/Social / Equality

5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4

Discrimination and Derogatory Language Gender Equality Physical Disabilities The Cost of Cheap Fashion

#6/Education

6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4

LGBT Education for All The Future of Education and Skills 2030 Refugees and Education Quality Education and Connecting Classrooms

This SDGZINE issue is a special school cover image edition with content generated by students Julia Giardini (9th grade) of the International School of Geneva.

school contact SDGZINE.ORG is an initiative from the sarah.lalaz@ecolint.ch ADDICTLAB ACADEMY and partners contributing to the sustainable development goals of the United Nations.

ecolint9innovate team 2020 Nicola Curtin, Jan Dijkstra, Sarah Lalaz, Daniel Auger with special thanks to Alex Conchard, David Woods, Michael Kewley, David Hawley

challenges Find more info on all the challenges and follow the project on WWW.ADDICTLAB.COM ŠLAB.002 sarl, 2020.

All rights reserved

#1/

SPECIAL SCHOOL EDITION JUNE 2020

the future is calling Over 140 Students of year 9 at the International School of Geneva (Ecolint) were given 24 issues directly related to the 17 Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations. These 13/14-year old’s have been challenged to work together and come up with ideas.

This Ecolint project was started by Sarah Lalaz in 2017 and subsequently developed with the Heads of Year 9.

It was accelerated further this year in conjunction with Nicky Curtin and Jan Djikstra who gave it an additional artistic and digital twist. The project creates an enriching experience, adding new skills to the student’s regular educational program - cross disciplinary groups from different classes, working with one or more unknown adult experts from the field requiring organization of their team and tasks... Who takes the lead?

How do they distribute the work? Valuable lessons for kids that age. Well, all ages, if you ask me.

It became even more challenging, since some virus showed up and all plans needed to change drastically.

All kids stuck at home - how’s that for a setting of a two-month collaborative project?

An unforeseen organizational glitch, obviously. But the lockdown and the pandemic itself turned out to be a changemaker on different levels. It created a framework for new ideas to prosper. Instead of fictitious concepts, we can now balance our ideas against actual concrete issues to tackle.

Reality thus overcame fiction and the wildest ideas should not be left out; COVID 19 showed (and shows us) the actual need for paradigm shifting ideation projects; in that sense, we can safely say COVID-19 is an unintended but major aspect added to the curriculum of these youngsters.

I am proud to welcome you to this special edition of the SDGzine. The idea of the SDGZine magazine is to create a source of inspiration and leave traces of the work that has been done. In my wildest dreams the magazine does not only show best practices and be an end point of a project, yet rather help accelerate these projects that deserve to be taken on by others.

The advantage of the Sustainable Development Goals - SDGs - is that they create a clear navigation system.

Only recently we produced SDGzine 01 in collaboration with the University of Geneva, and at this very moment the SDGzine 02 is in production. The one you are holding is a first Special School Edition.

As a reader, the SDGs will guide you through the 24 projects, each going from global challenges to local actions. Because, sure, we can have ideas. We can do hackathons. But my fear is always these are time consuming events that become rather team building activities than actual change makers. Hence the importance of the local action part of the kid’s missions.

What concrete action can they think of? What could they do, themselves? How can we turn that global issue into something very tangible close by?

And true, the lockdown made lots of the actual actions impossible. But we cannot deny that the energy from these youngsters is exemplary. For other kids and schools, sure, but also for us, adults.

We might have forgotten about the importance of things. We might have lost a bit the hierarchy of needs of our planet and mankind. Browsing through all these ideas, and you’ll get a wake up call. We need to act.

The future is calling. 144 students at a time.

Jan Van Mol janvanmol@sdgzine.org

contact info@sdgzine.org

G E N E VA TSINGHUA INITIATIVE

for the Sustainable Development Goals

publisher Jan Van Mol

LAB.002 sàrl SDG Solution Space Campus Biotech Innovation Park Avenue de Secheron 15 1202 Geneva Switzerland

Health

1.1

Water sanitation action: first hand experience - walk 3km to get water C

lean water, basic toilets and good hygiene practices are essential for good health and well being and should be a minimum requirement for life in the 21st century. Today, there are around 2.4 billion people who do not use improved sanitation, and 663 million who do not have access to improved water sources.

Without these basic needs, the lives of millions of people are at risk. Globally, 829 000 people are estimated to die each year from diarrhoea as a result of unsafe drinking-water, sanitation and hand hygiene ( source: WHO), and in the WHO’s European Region, 14 people die every day due to diarrhoeal disease associated with poor water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH). For children under five, water- and sanitation-related diseases are one of the leading causes of death. Every day, over 800 children die from preventable diseases caused by poor water, and a lack of sanitation and hygiene (source; UNICEF).

Providing safe water and sanitation and promoting hygiene have significantly reduced the burden of disease. Water, sanitation and hygiene promotion are also essential for human dignity and economic growth.

EXPERT CONSULTED Anand Balachandran, WHO.

GLOBAL CHALLENGE

LOCAL ACTION

Why is water sanitation important?

Water and sanitation Sanitation refers to public health conditions related to clean drinking water and adequate treatment and disposal of human excreta and sewage. Any recycling activities within the sanitation system must be safe and consider the nutrients in excreta and wastewater. The drinking water must not risk the health of the people.

Our action will be to try and experience what it is like not to have easy access to clean water. To do that we will go on a walk for 3 kilometers and at the end we will get water from a source. Then we will walk back carrying the heavy water. Our goal is to understand how important clean water is and how hard it is for people in some countries.

Water is a basic necessity and an important resource for sustaining life. The decline in water quality endangers the health of humans as well as the ecosystem. The plant and animal life and the cycle of the food chain are all interdependent.

Clean drinking water, hygiene, and sanitation play an important part in maintaining the health of people and the control of enteric diseases.

What are the causes of poor sanitation?

Poor sanitation such as infected water source, lack of toilets or lack of soap and hygiene are linked to transmission of diseases such as cholera, diarrhoea, dysentery, hepatitis A, typhoid and polio.

Poor sanitation affects health, children’s education, the social and economic development of the country. Diseases cause a high risk of death so families can’t earn a living.

This action is also good because with the COVID-19, it’s not going to break any of the security and hygiene rules and it is also a good opportunity to get outside during these difficult times.

THE TEAM

Camelia Schindler

Alex Takahashi

Emna Coigny

Justine Botarie

Charlie Wass

Andrea Fedele

Health

1.2

Mental health action: meetings W

orldwide 10-20% of children and adolescents experience mental disorders. Half of all mental illnesses begin by the age of 14 and three-quarters by mid-20s. Neuropsychiatric conditions are the leading cause of disability in young people in all regions. If untreated, these conditions severely influence children’s development, their educational attainments and their potential to live fulfilling and productive lives. Children with mental disorders face major challenges with stigma, isolation and discrimination, as well as lack of access to health care and education facilities, in violation of their fundamental human rights. (source: WHO)

EXPERT CONSULTED Alexander Qaqaya, Director at Credit Suisse and Certified Environmental, Social and Governance Analyst.

How can you raise awareness of mental health issues (e.g. depression & anxiety etc) that could affect you and your peers? Can you be instrumental in organising an event to raise awareness?

GLOBAL CHALLENGE

LOCAL ACTION

Our global issue is linked to the sustainable development goals 3 and 4:Good Health and Quality Education. It is linked to these STG goals because to have good mental health there needs to be a strong and helpful education system.

We will coordinate meetings with department head-teachers and “Head of Year”s in order to discuss the planning of tests. We believe that the primary reason for mental health issues in our school community is the miscoordination of tests and homework between subjects. There are weeks without any tests and then suddenly we have to manage 3 or 4 tests in completely different subjects in the span of a few days. It is difficult to properly study for so many topics at once and not lose our sanity. Luckily, in our school, we have a valuable asset we can use; ManageBac, is a platform that can support our action as teachers can use it to check the dates of other subjects’ tests.

We investigated the issue of mental health in young students/teenagers, due to modern academic structure and systems. This issue is important because many students suffer from increasing mental health issues, especially now in the past few years.

According to this graph, mental health issues rise in the late/middle teens (especially for depression and anxiety.)

We would also like to have an overall plan of the year for each subject, to help us know what learning awaits us, possibly do some pre-class research to be familiarized with the topics and units, and to know when to expect tests.

THE TEAM

Daniil Shulga

Layla Issa

Benjamin Polguer

Hoi-ling Kwan

Victoria Giardini

Karim Khuri

Health

1.3

Malaria action: awareness through Social Media and Kahoot E

very year, malaria claims the lives of more than 400 000 people. Tens of millions more fall ill from a disease that is preventable and treatable.

Children under the age of five in sub-Saharan Africa are especially vulnerable, accounting for about two thirds of all global deaths due to malaria.

In recent years, African countries have made tremendous progress in the fight against malaria using core disease-cutting tools such as insecticide-treated mosquito nets, indoor spraying with insecticides and antimalarial medicines.

But in some areas where these approaches have been adopted, malaria illness and death remain stubbornly high. New and complementary tools are needed to further drive down the disease burden with a view to achieving —ultimately — the vision of a world free of malaria.

GLOBAL CHALLENGE

LOCAL ACTION

We were set the challenge to be able to describe many aspects of malaria. For example the signs and symptoms, the malaria life cycle, means to control malaria, the positive and negatives of different prevention interventions and the characteristics of an ideal prevention tool. This would help us understand 6 types of Malaria affecting humans and give us an overall better understanding of some of the struggles people go through on a daily basis.

A critical problem is that Malaria does not exist in Europe so there is a lack of knowledge. Raising awareness and informing our community that it is a major disease killing many children in Africa would be an effective way to help. By showing the low cost of a mosquito bednet we may be able to get considerable donations or on a larger scale to ‘Malaria no More’ which could help people working on Malaria treatment, vaccinations and prevention. Maybe information might encourage students to take up a career in Public Health or medical research to help eliminate Malaria altogether.

We found out that it is much more complex than we, at least, realised. There are many types of malaria, many treatments, many interventions. Understanding each part was crucial to get a full understanding.

Although critical to try and eradicate, we also found out that preventions have their obstacles.

As well as this, we managed to understand some fundamental links in the impact that Covid-19 and Malaria have on the spread of disease in the human population.

We discovered many things about Malaria, and we tried to use our understanding to raise awareness. We learned about links between Malaria and Covid-19 which is something we did not foresee. One major thing we learned was how important donations are, and how raising awareness helps people near and far to understand.

We are working on an online quiz to educate students on Malaria. *Lots of fun questions *Learn how you can help an African village. *Everything you need to know about getting rid of mosquitos

EXPERT CONSULTED Dr Mary Hamel, Team Lead, Malaria Vaccines World Health Organisation.

Pierre Hugo, Senior Director Access & Product Management, Medicines for Malaria Venture.

A simple mosquito net with insecticide can protect the sleepers and kill the mosquito.

A mosquito bite infects the human’s liver and causes malaria -a fever and often death Mosquito bednets are low cost and can help a whole village by reducing the mosquito population Europe can help Africa in this simple way.

THE TEAM Bente Hansen

Charlie Poole

Toby Bane

Finnya Hansen

Connor Ralph

Alice Capobianco

Health

1.4

Obesity action: stand up at work stations O

besity is a significant public health concern affecting more than half a billion people worldwide. Obesity rise is not only limited to developed countries, but to developing nations as well. Studies have reported direct links between obesity and an increase in the risks for coronary heart disease, type 2 diabetes and cancers as well as medical costs to manage the problem.

EXPERT CONSULTED Dr. Julie Hall, Philipines representative at WHO and public health physician.

Obesity is a complex condition with biological, genetic, behavioral, social, cultural, and environmental influences - describe some of them To what extent do race-ethnicity, gender, age, income, and other socio-demographic factors play a role in this complex health issue?

Suggest ways in which the ‘eat less, move more’ mantra (which places the blame solely on the individual) can be shifted to focus on what society can do to promote health and prevent the onset of obesity. Think of what policy makers could be encouraged to do.

How can you bring about awareness of the problem of obesity at school or in your local community? Can you think of ways in which you can create opportunities to engage fellow students in leading a healthier life?

GLOBAL CHALLENGE

LOCAL ACTION

Our global issue is mainly related to the third sustainable development goal, good health and well-being. This is because obesity is a health-related issue, and it is caused by the over-consumption of foods containing fats and sugar. Obesity can also be related to mental health issues, such as depression or anxiety, as people suffering from these illnesses tend to turn to food to procrastinate the issues they are having to live through.

Our main idea for a local action was prevented by the COVID-19 outbreak and the prevention from going to school on a daily basis. But now that La Chât is beginning to re-open its campus, our local action can be put into play.

According to our expert, obesity is a worldwide problem as most jobs offered to citizens require for them to sit down on a chair at a desk for 7 to 8 hours a day. This also applies in schools. This lack of movement in someone’s everyday life is a major contributor to obesity rates rising. To top it all off, the lunches served at cafeterias in schools and workplaces do not promote a healthy lifestyle

According to our expert, Obesity is mainly caused due to the fact that people work in environments that don’t promote a healthy lifestyle. Our idea was that we would each go through our regular school day, but instead of sitting down, we stand up at our work stations.

According to a study, simply standing up at the workstation burns as many calories, if not more than going for a jog or a workout.

This idea might be difficult to execute however, as some classes and working environments might not be able to accomodate this style of working. We do think however, that this idea could be effective on the long run.

Obesity facts: Obesity is linked to over 60 chronic diseases.

1 in 6 children are affected by obesity in the US.

THE TEAM Victor Marconnet

Jack Leech

Devon Dominguez

Benjamin Filler

Luke Gnadt

Sustainability

2.1

Soy and deforestation action: Instagram page M

ost people associate soy with tofu and soy milk. However, only a small portion of soy is consumed directly by humans. In fact, most of the world’s soy crop ends up in feed for poultry, pork, cattle and even farmed fish.

And unfortunately, the expansion of soy to feed the world’s growing demand for meat often contributes to deforestation and the loss of other valuable ecosystems in Latin America and elsewhere (source wwf panda.org) What impact does the destruction of such ecosystems used to plant soy have upon our planet?

Can you be instrumental in educating your fellow students about the impact that soy has on the environment? Can you perhaps make the connection between the Amazon and chicken nuggets (for example)?

GLOBAL CHALLENGE

LOCAL ACTION

What is soy?

Soy is a legume that originates in East Asia.

Soya beans, which are grown by the soy plant, are edible and can be used to make a wide variety of things, like soy milk, miso and many meat alternatives (like tofu). Soy oil is very common - according to the WWF, 27% of vegetable oil production worldwide is related to soy. Soy is high in protein and has been proven to have health benefits, although studies on these benefits can be quite conflicting. Most importantly, soy is used as animal feed, particularly for chickens, pigs and cows, so when we eat meat or drink milk, we consume it indirectly.

One of our actions for our 9Innovate project was to raise awareness about soy and deforestation. Since we can’t do much outside of our homes, we thought it was a good idea to create an instagram page to help raise awareness. So far we have four posts and 72 followers. The page was created a few weeks ago.

Soy production can be linked directly to climate change and deforestation. The use of soy for biodiesel and animal feed is increasing in response to rising global demand.

According to the WWF, since the 1950s, global soybean production has increased x 15! Huge expanses of rainforests have been and continue to be cut down just to meet our requirements, notably the Amazon rainforest. By not taking action, we are not only contributing to deforestation and climate change, but to the non-sustainable ways the soy is grown, which consequently also add to the problem

Our second post was about how we indirectly consume soy by eating meat. It was quite simple, with the caption reading that soy and meat are related, so eating meat results in deforestation.

Our posts are meant to educate people about soy and deforestation, and what they can do to help. Our first post was defining soy and how it is related to deforestation.

We also made it clear that people can DM us with facts about soy that we will post.

Our third and most-liked post was a thread that showed people what they can do. The post detailed all the simple things you as an individual can do to stop deforestation and combat climate change. For example, educating friends and family about soy, or eating less meat.

Our fourth post was sent to us in our dms, it was a fact about agriculture. It says that 55% of the world’s crops are eaten by us, but over a third are for livestock. This showed that many crops are grown for animals, even if it wasn’t directly about soy.

EXPERT CONSULTED Scott Poynton, Founder of The Forest Trust, Author of ‘Beyond Certification’.

Soy and Sustainability: “We can create real, transformational change in the way we interact with nature, It’s just about doing the right things!”

THE TEAM Cameron Zuger

Claudia Olague

Meera Shroff Feldman

Helena Wetherall

Arthur Saltiel

Patricia Winssinger

Sustainability

2.2

Sustainable consumption action: Instagram account T

he negative impact of eating meat (both on the planet and individual health) has been in the news repeatedly in the past months. Yet, many students and staff are reluctant to let go of their daily meat consumption.

How can they be convinced that to move towards a plant-rich diet is a good for both their own health and the global environment? And is a plant-rich diet necessarily also good for health and the planet?

EXPERT CONSULTED Martin Poulsen, Managing Director, Acacia Sustainable Business Advisors.

Local Action: The cafeteria has started offering weekly vegetarian days, but there is quite a bit of resistance on the part of the community. It is your challenge to find ways in which to convince the student population at La Chat that plant-rich diets are not just not good for the planet, but also for their own health.

GLOBAL CHALLENGE

LOCAL ACTION

The Problem?

It is important to not consume too much and tire out our world’s resources. One growing problem is our meat consumption. Farming livestock, especially in intensive agriculture, takes enormous amounts of energy and water. On top of that, the amount of meat an average person eats is even unhealthy.

Because of the Covid crisis we had to change our action. We all agreed that using the media would be the best course of action.

The Solution ?

One good way to help our world is to eat less meat. Being vegetarian or vegan is a big commitment and is not for everyone.

That is why reducing the amount we eat is effective; it’s easy to do and truly makes an immense difference.

So we created an instagram account and a website. We use these to share recipes, tips and surveys to help people eat a sustainable diet. We also use these media platforms to share new technology and studies related to sustainable consumption.

Sustainable Consumption is a very broad topic and we discussed everything from farm bashing to changing people’s mindsets. We decided to focus on how people could change their diets to eat more sustainably.

Sourcing our food is also of great importance. Making that small effort to buy local produce saves the planet. By buying local products, we support local economies and limit the amount of transports used for the food.

THE TEAM Pola Aleksandrowicz

Louei Muller

Liam Grogan

Calou Chindler

Margo Cooper

Carina Upson

Sustainability

2.3

Disposable plastic action: collect plastic waste – a home inventory EXPERT CONSULTED

D

Olga Navarro, Plastic free Campus Administrator.

isposable plastic items are so common that it’s easy to not notice them.

These single-use plastic items are everywhere - the ubiquitous plastic bottles of water or soft drinks; the plastic straws delivered in our drinks; the plastic bags offered to us at stores; the plastic cups, bottles and utensils at nearly every social event; the plastic packaging of nearly everything in the supermarket. (source:plasticpollutioncoalition) Investigate the different types of plastics - which plastics are we consuming, which are considered safe for recycling, and which types are typically not accepted. Research about how plastic pollution is linked to climate change.

GLOBAL CHALLENGE

LOCAL ACTION

What is single use plastic?

Single use plastic, like the name indicates, is plastic that is most of the time used only once. Plastic waste is either incinerated, recycled or disposed into nature. The recycled plastic can be reused but that is only 9% of all the plastic ever produced and only 1% has been recycled successfully, most of it is either left in nature, disposed incorrectly or incinerated which causes huge amounts of C02. Single use plastic will create an even bigger problem over the next years if we don’t change. Plastic never truly disappears but breaks down into microplastics which enter the food chain and interfere with our body and our health.

What were we trying to do?

We raised awareness on this issue by collecting the plastic waste from our homes to identify how much waste we create in just one home. We made our own change to our daily lives. .

Because of the restriction of COVID-19, we looked for a home-based action throughout a family experience: We collected all plastics our families and ourselves consume before disposing them as waste, over several 1-week periods. We studied our results: quantifying and analyzing the types of plastic. What ended up happening was each of us realized how much useless plastics we use and how much it could be avoided if we bought differently. It’s not something that’s always on our minds, the milk bottle you finished this morning you throw it away without really thinking. Another thing we did was make a Google form to see how many people (we got around 100 replies) were willing to make a pledge to reduce single use plastic.

Picture of single use plastic collected by the team.

What can we do?

How can few people stop this? Isn’t it up to the big companies that have to change?”

And you’d be right, but if we change our habits and stop buying single use plastic the companies will lose the only thing they care about, money. The market is changing and companies will have to adapt if they want to survive.

DOES YOUR FAMILY DRINK WATER FROM PLASTIC BOTTLES?

THE TEAM Maarit van Lith

Sean Tunnry

Zoe Fonjallaz

Daniel Shirley

Lara Schroeder

Kai Blanc

Sustainability

2.4

Food Waste action: help food management in our school H

unger is still one of the most urgent development challenges, yet the world is producing more than enough food.Up to one third of all food is spoiled or squandered before it is consumed by people.

It is an excess in an age where almost a billion people go hungry, and represents a waste of the labour, water, energy, land and other inputs that went into producing that food (source FOA). Define food loss and food waste.

Describe how they are caused. Approximately how much food is lost or wasted globally per year? What effect does food loss and waste have upon the environment?

EXPERT CONSULTED Chris Jones, Landscape Architect & Specialist in Urban Food Systems.

Can you investigate the major reasons for food waste in the cafeteria?

Can you be instrumental in thinking of innovative ways to reduce or deal with food wastage at school?Can you create a local ‘sustainable food network’?

GLOBAL CHALLENGE

LOCAL ACTION

What is food waste?

Food waste is any food or parts of it appropriate for human consumption removed from the food supply chain to be disposed without being eaten, whether or not it has been kept beyond its expiry date or left to spoil. It is often because people buy too much of it or because they don’t consider it ‘perfect’ or ‘edible’. Some of the waste is made at home, but also in the stocking centers, in the supermarkets, and just after the production.

Our local action is set up so as to help our school community reduce its food waste.

This reduces the energy that goes into the disposal and management of food waste.

In this way we take a step to a sustainable and waste free school and then our lives. It saves energy and reduces the negative effect humans have on the environment.

Why is it important and what are its consequences?

It is important environmentally and economically because it contributes to global hunger (we have enough food to feed the starving people but we waste it), climate change and many others. If we don’t stop it, then a lot of money will be lost and the way we get rid of the waste is bad environmentally.

The related SDGs for our Global issue are No Hunger, Sustainable cities, consumption, climate change, life below water, on land.

What was our action idea?

For our action we chose to help food management in our school. We decided to create a plan to inform the cooks how many portions to cook so as not to have too much excess. By managing the food that is produced and served at our school -through letting the students choose what options they want- we would be limiting the food waste produced by our school by a significant amount considering the amount of people in our school.

This would make a very large contribution to the local food waste management.

Why did you choose to do what you did?

We chose this action because it involves the whole school community. So by creating a change there it would affect many students and hopefully have a noticeable impact. Only by modifying your own way of living and setting a role model, can you hope to convince others to follow. So our school must take the first action to have others follow.

What did you discover?

In researching how to reduce our food waste, we learnt that there are quite a few things that have to get wasted (ie egg shells, avocado pits, uneaten meat, etc...) It is almost impossible to produce zero food waste unless we specifically chose food that is 100 percent edible (which is quite difficult sometimes). We also learnt that we should eat less meat since the wasted meat can’t be composted and just adds to the trash.

Also things such as buying locally and making sure that you eat what you buy can impact your waste production.

Our dream team is composed of James, Anouk, Yala, Amélie, Tiago and Miki. Well, when i say dream team, I don’t really mean it, we still have a few flaws let to fix. We’re all delighted to be here working on this crucial global issue. We all believe that if we put our mind to it all of the global goals and issues can be conquered. I hope we all come together and act against these goals, and feel as passionate as we are about this issue.

THE TEAM James Baker

Tiago Rodrigues

Michael Tadesse

Yala Feikin

Anouk Chalumeaux

Amelie Nissen

Peace

3.1

Literacy level and violence action: picture book EXPERT CONSULTED

A

Dr. Mamadou Dian Balde, Deputy Director of the Division of Resilience and Solutions, UNHCR.

ccording to the World Factbook, almost three-quarters of the world’s 775 million illiterate adults are found in only ten countries. Of all the illiterate adults in the world, two-thirds are women. Literacy breeds thinking. It fosters opinions. It encourages independent attitudes. It also develops opportunities for innovation and economic productivity (source; Eugene Marlow).

Adults who are literate are more likely to read to their children, be employed full time, use the Internet and e-mail, vote and volunteer.

Literacy can also facilitate conflict resolution and peacebuilding; when literacy is in association with learning about the world, it is likely to promote intercultural understanding, tolerance and respect.

Madrasa Early Childhood Programme in Zanzibar is an NGO which works together with poor and underprivileged communities to close the literacy gap. A request has been made by them for willing volunteers (good at art) to illustrate manuscripts (written by local teachers) and turn them into books.

They are hopeful that by providing rural schools with attractive educational materials, parents will be encouraged to spend more time with their children putting their literacy skills into practice and in turn, encouraging their children to increase theirs.

GLOBAL CHALLENGE

LOCAL ACTION

We investigated the link between violence, peace and literacy rates.

The link is that we are going to get people to draw things for illiterate people for possibly here in Switzerland.

We found out it is of importance because a large number of conflicts happen because people do not understand each other or society. When people do not know how to read they are unable to understand society and therefore, respond with violence. If this is not addressed, useless conflicts could keep on happening and spreading.

According to UNESCO, 250 million children do not have access to learn basic writing and reading skills.

The Link Between Literacy and Peace

We chose to draw a picture book, and send it to people who don’t have access to education the way we do (therefore could be illiterate), because we thought it would be a useful to help them learn how to read.

We learned about how literacy levels itself is not so important but more about what you do with that education, what you choose to read or write with that information.

THE TEAM Lara Sukkari

Juan Lucas de Oliveira

Hana Van Ommeren

Jessica Hicks

Magnus Wood

Ian King

Peace

3.2

ICT & Peace action: setting up a Twitter account & creating app I

nformation Communication Technologies (ICTs) are increasingly prevalent across the developing world and as such are being used in a variety of ways to prevent or address violence conflict. Examples of ICTs include mobile phones, the internet, social media platforms such as Whatsapp, Facebook and Twitter, satellites, and GIS mapping applications, and the crowdsourcing of information through these platforms. A large number of applications have been developed to gather, map and disseminate data on peace and conflict.

EXPERT CONSULTED Anne Gloor, Founder and CEO of Nexus Vesting

How are digital technologies used to prevent, manage or address violent conflict and promote stabilisation and peacebuilding? You can choose to focus on the following case studies if you wish: Saffron Revolutionî in Myanmar in 2007 London Bombings Bombings 7th July in 2005 Tsunami in Indonesia & Sri Lanka in 2004 Can you investigate the positive and negative effects of ICT, especially how ICT reinforces or reduces conflicts in our school. What about in our local environment? Do you have any suggestions for changes you would like to see implemented?

GLOBAL CHALLENGE

LOCAL ACTION

Global Challenges is a series of dossiers designed to share with a broader readership.

How does your local action link to your global challenge?

What did you find out?

That global issues can be a real problem for the earth, all around the world.

We are thinking about setting up a Twitter account to figure out more about how the people around us are being affected by the Covid19 issue.

Why is it of importance? What will happen if it is not addressed?

Because the future is going to be based on the internet so we need to find a way to use the internet to achieve peace.

Information can be gathered and spread instantly. Sometimes this is good and sometimes bad.

The social media can start riots or inflame situations. It can also inform injustice as we saw in USA with the police killing a black man.

We discovered all about how peace could be used in so many ways for good. the internet could solve some of the biggest problems.

For instance, by using the internet we could make an app or an extension on some social media platform so we can talk and help other. Another idea we had was to make an app where people could go on it anonymously and give advice to others or ask for help in this difficult time.

THE TEAM Owen Broome

Pauline Daelemans

Isak Lim

Erika Ware

Louis Brittain

Selim Mimouni

Peace

3.3

Conflict Resolution Action: bake sale funding Syrian charities T

he classic cycle of violence, which ensures that conflict follows conflict, has roughly seven stages: an atrocity is committed resulting in shock and terror, fear and grief follow, and then anger, hatred hardening into bitterness, followed by revenge and retaliation, resulting in a further atrocity. In recent times this cycle has been evident in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, in Rwanda and repeatedly in different regions of former Yugoslavia. source: Dr Scilla Elworthy (2001)

EXPERTS CONSULTED Nathalie Birt, Mediator, Dispute Resolution Consultant and Coach.

Global Issue: Many countries go to war as a way of resolving conflict, leading to great costs for all involved. What alternative strategies can be used to resolve conflict more peacefully?

Robert Dann, Chief of Political Affairs, Office of the UN Special Envoy for Syria.

Can you investigate an international situation where alternative measures were used to resolve conflict more peacefully (e.g.Gandhi)?

Can you identify different strategies that could be used to resolve conflict more peacefully? Which ones have been successful?

Local Action: Could you apply your findings to our school? What strategies could be used to help resolve conflict amongst students more peacefully? Can you suggest ways to help raise awareness and practice some of the skills that would lead to a more empathetic school community?

GLOBAL CHALLENGE

LOCAL ACTION

Our global topic is Conflict Resolution and the topic we have decided to investigate in is The Syrian Civil War in 2020.

Our local action is a bake sale with food from Syria to help raise money that will then be given to a charity to help the refugees and Syrian people.

Due to the conflict over 5.6 million people/ refugees have fled the country since 2011.

There are about 13.1 million people in need of help, 6.6 internationally displaced people and about 3 million people in hard-to-reach and besieged areas. This has a big impact all over the world. Millions of people will continue to die because of this conflict.

COVID-19 is only increasing the death rate as most people don’t have healthcare in Syria due to the conflict. Millions of people are suffering every day as human rights are being disregarded and ignored.

Our other action that will be done later on is creating a website with stats, real-life stories and videos to raise awareness of UN conflict resolution activities in Syria and what is happening.

Our global issue is linked to the SDG 16, peace, justice and strong institutions since we are covering conflict resolution. In order to resolve conflict, you need peace and mediation.

Our global issue is linked to the SDG 16, peace, justice and strong institutions since we are covering conflict resolution. In order to resolve conflict, you need peace and mediation.

THE TEAM Jane Lim

Kai Salama

Minha Amir

Eloise Simpson

Thomas Plasschaert

Tatiana Manthos

Peace

3.4

Gang Behaviour and lasting peace action: reach out I

n many countries, young people (12-17 year olds) are drawn into or pressured into gangs. In the gang, they find a sense of belonging, a source of protection, of income (often from illegal activities) and most importantly, a sense of dignity. At the same time, those gangs are mostly violent and criminal, leading to jail or death. Can you investigate a country for which violence and gang culture is prevalent (e.g. El Salvador, Colombia, Brazil)?

Can you identify factors that draw or push young people to be part of a gang and make it so hard to leave? Have any other solutions or projects been successful in encouraging and supporting young people to move away from gangs?

EXPERT CONSULTED Catherine Barnett, Unicef (UNHCR).

Could you apply your findings? Are there any group dynamics (negative behaviours of a group, exclusion of individuals) for which some of the thinking that you have done around gangs could provide a solution?

What do you think might tempt or push people to take up more negative behaviours in the school community? What might help them to resist or step back from these? Can you suggest ways to help include individuals who are part of the school community yet who do not identify with the ‘norm’?

GLOBAL CHALLENGE We have investigated gangs and gang violence happening around the world. We found out many interesting facts on how gangs can affect everyone surrounding them and the cities where gangs are situated.

While larger cities and suburban counties expectedly report higher numbers of gangs, there is also considerable variation within each area type.More than half of suburban counties and 45 percent of larger cities report 10 or fewer active gangs in their jurisdictions. A majority of agencies in smaller cities and rural counties report fewer than five gangs.

We also found out that the problem of gangs is reaching a critical point in many communities today. Communities are affected as they struggle to pay for the costs of law enforce-

ment strategies to combat the operation and spread of gang violence. No one can place a dollar amount on the loss of life and the physical and emotional suffering experienced by victims and neighborhoods under gang siege. Thousands of our youth are irreparably harmed by the violent and criminal activity that is condoned and encouraged by gang membership. Most disturbing is the increasing trend for gangs to recruit children as young as seven or eight years of age.

Our goal is to get them to see that joining a gang will not help and that there are other things in life. The ‘’expert’’ that has experience should then be able to see it from the same point of view and understand these people. Our final goal would be to help them and to stop them from joining these gangs and ruining their lives.

LOCAL ACTION We will source a person that was in a situation where they joined a gang or were going to and get them to help these people from a familiar point of view. We want the young people in some of the poorer communities that are often joining gangs to understand what they can do and that they have a purpose in life.

THE TEAM Nubia Mpondo

Alejandro de Bellegarde

Chloe Larsen

Matteo Chenal

Benjamin Hess

Theodor Sommer

Technology & Innovation

4.1

Digital disconnect action: planting trees for screen time W

hile the internet’s data is largely invisible, it is processed and stored in massive data centers all over the world. Those data centers are powered 24/7, just waiting to send information — videos, podcasts, music, news, memes, messages and everything else the internet offers — to our digital devices.

EXPERTS CONSULTED Phillipa Biggs, Accountant and Economist.

Using our smartphones, laptops and tablets more frequently means data centers are pushing out an estimated two percent of global greenhouse emissions — nearly the same proportion as air travel. And unfortunately, all that data that we’ve grown accustomed to having fast at our fingertips along with our always-on mentality ends up contributing to our digital carbon footprints. source: nami.org & bustle Can you think of an innovative way to explain what a ‘digital carbon footprint’ is? What are the climate and carbon costs associated with digital technologies and our connected society and world?

Can you suggest some ways to encourage others to reduce their own digital carbon footprint? Can you think of some ideas to help students at school to digitally disconnect and reconnect for real?

GLOBAL CHALLENGE

LOCAL ACTION

Everytime we send an email or save a photo onto our cloud it has to go somewhere. The data from everyone is stored in giant data centers in the North Pole with enough storage to save data from everyone in a country.

How does your local action link to your global challenge?

We are making up for what damage we do, by planting trees.

The reason data centers are located near the North Pole is because of the heat that is released. When you’ve used your computer for a while and it starts to get hot, and the fan starts to go into overdrive. Now imagine that on a continental scale, and instead of a fan, it’s an entire continent cooling it. The heat produced from these data centers is exponential, because over time, more people are wanting electronics, and the more electronics there are, the more data is being moved around which means more data centers, and that leads in turn leads to the North Pole melting quicker. Which, we are already doing at an alarming rate.

Why did you choose to do what you did?

We chose to plant trees, for every hour people spend on their screens. We have asked the students of the school if they could donate a certain amount of money for every hour they spend on their computer during school and then to plant the required amount of trees to offset the carbon emitted. I t is going to cost a lot of money, but if we all chip in, it’s going to be a lot more affordable. Also we realise that saplings take 5 years to grow big enough enough absorb a decent amount of carbon, but we have to start somewhere!

What did you learn?

We have learnt about data centers, about technology about the earth about global warming, about the astonishing amount of time people spend on screens and that they are so useful in so many situations and are relied on for so many things.

THE TEAM Maya Breckenridge

Boris Golub

Charlotte Hansford

Elliot Benedek

David Cooper

Louis Aldridge

Technology & Innovation

4.2

Drones for good action: Drone Aide O

f all the technological innovations that have emerged in recent years, UAV’s (unmanned aerial vehicles) or drones, are probably one of the most well-known and exciting. Regrettably, much of the publicity surrounding the machines to date has focused primarily on their military applications ignoring the numerous other ways drones are being adapted to benefit society.

EXPERT CONSULTED Jan Van Mol, Founder, creative think tank Addictlab, the Addictlab Academy and publisher, Ad!dict and SDGzine.

How will drones positively impact life on land on a global scale? Can you investigate their social, environmental and economic impact? What are the legal implications of their widening use?

GLOBAL CHALLENGE

LOCAL ACTION

Our global challenge is called Drones for good. Most of our group were not very certain about drones so this was very interesting for some of us. We realised after meeting with our expert that drones can be useful for many things. We wanted to relate them to the global pandemic with Covid-19. Drones can be very useful during this pandemic.

For our action we decided to come up with a company. This company is called Drone Aide. Drone Aide delivers food and medical supplies to people with compromised immune systems using drones.

We can use drones to deliver food and medicine for people who have a high risk of being infected. These people should be staying home and helping to lower the number of cases as we all should be. Unfortunately, it is difficult for them to receive the goods they need while distancing themselves from other people.

A solution to this issue could be using drones to deliver essential items such as food and medical supplies to people who have a high risk of being infected with Covid-19.

High risk people should not be going outside to get their food and medical supplies. We as a community should be helping them. So as a group and with help from our expert our action is to help the high risk people by delivering food and medical supplies that the high risk people need. These people can get in contact with us. Telling us what they need and then we can go collect their food and medical supplies. Then we can use drones to deliver it to the front doorstep. Which means we wont be having any physical contact with the person. Once they collect the food and medical supplies we can fly the drone away from the house.

THE TEAM Julia Giardini

Sarah Issa

Finn Sealy

Zacchaeus Poulsen

Thomas Lewis

Max Deram

Marcellus Wilson

Technology & Innovation

4.3

AI & Electric cars action: a contract to buy your next car electric C

lose your eyes and imagine a world without traffic, without lines to find a parking space, fewer cars, less noise on the street and fewer accidents.

If you opened your eyes in twenty years, this might be reality. Electric & driverless cars could provide a series of benefits which, for now, we can only imagine (source www.androidpit.com). However, as always, there’s a flipside.

What are the pros and cons surrounding the new technology which will perhaps be surrounding our lives in the near future?

How do driverless cars work? What are the issues surrounding them and the impact they might have on cities and society?

EXPERT CONSULTED Kristian Parker, Oak Foundation.

Can you get in contact and interview a person in the car industry to find out about the future of them from their perspective? Can you write up a report?

Can you be instrumental in inventing and programming a robotic car?

GLOBAL CHALLENGE

LOCAL ACTION

Nowadays, cars are one of the easiest ways of transport and they are very popular. There are around 2 billion vehicles in the world as of 2020. This doesn’t seem like it would be an issue, however, only around 2.2% of these cars are electric. Sadly, this means 98.8% of cars are still emitting CO2 into the atmosphere. These cars are producing a great amount of CO2 everyday.

Our plan is to inform people about the benefits of having an electric car by showing the statistics about the C02 emissions and how it affects pollution and sending out a pdf contract that asks people to promise their next car will be electric. We will give some suggestions of brands and some price estimates. People can stick it up somewhere as a reminder.

Our project was about electric cars and the environment. We looked at the difference between diesel cars and electric cars and what impact they each have on the environment. We soon realized that electric cars are much better for the climate since they don’t pollute the environment. We then knew the right thing to do is try and promote them as much as possible.

Why? Eventually everyone will need to sell their car because they can only last so long. We want to encourage the next car they buy to be electric. The gradual change is good because immediate change is unlikely.

Our action will help educate car owners about the harm that emissions from diesel and petrol cars have on the planet.

What did we learn?

We learnt about different brands, how long cars usually last and the prices of electric cars.

CO2 is a greenhouse gas that drives global climate change-extreme weather conditions, rising temperatures and change in wildlife populations.

THE TEAM David Jurcso

Ozzie Bar

Adrian Cristobal

Anushka Forbes

Mireia Ilopart

Gabi de Bellegarde

Technology & Innovation

4.4

e-Waste action: booklet & video O

nce electronic devices reach their end-of-life stage, they become waste, and are often referred to as e-waste. E-waste is categorized as hazardous waste due to the presence of toxic materials such as mercury, lead and brominated flame retardants. E-waste may also contain precious metals such as gold, copper and nickel and rare materials of strategic value such as indium and palladium. These precious and heavy metals could be recovered, recycled and used as valuable source of secondary raw materials. It has been documented that e-wastes are shipped to developing countries where it is often not managed in an environmentally sound manner, thus posing a serious threat to both human health and the environment. source: Renee Cho, Columbia University

EXPERT CONSULTED Tatiana Terekhova, Secretariat of the Basel, Rotterdam and Stockholm Conventions, UNiTAR.

What is in e-waste? Why is it harmful for the environment? What is a ‘circular economy’? Can you suggest how the electronics industry What you can do to educate individuals in your local area about the adverse effects of e-waste?

GLOBAL CHALLENGE

LOCAL ACTION

E-waste is a popular, name for the electronic products that are near the end of their “useful life.” Computers, televisions, stereos, copiers, and fax machines are amongst the electronic products regularly discarded.

Many of these products can be reused, or recycled.

The main point of our local actions are to raise awareness and deepen knowledge on what e-waste is, why it is harmful, and what you can do to help.

According to the calrecycle web site. “With the passage of the Electronic Waste Recycling Act of 2003, certain portions of the electronic waste stream are defined as the systems to recover and recycle them will be administratively regulated beyond the universal waste rules that apply to material handling.”

When your old phones, computers and electrical gadgets are finished with where do they end up? I’m sure most of you didn’t know e-waste even existed!

Michael Kewley, Director of Marketing, Ecolint.

In order to do these things we created a booklet and a small video about the basics of e-waste.

When we were making our booklet and video we learnt a lot more about e-waste simply by doing research and watching videos.

We think this is a good local action because it will raise awareness and people will start being careful of where they throw things and consider recycling.

THE TEAM Mayliss Demeire

Peakay Clifford

Ian Snider

Jamsedine Balde

Cathy Mi

Lucie Klein

Social / Equality

5.1

Discrimination & derogatory language action: videos

C

Discrimination occurs when people are treated less favourably than other people are in a comparable situation only because they belong, or are perceived to belong to a certain group or category of people. People may be discriminated against because of their age, disability, ethnicity, origin, political belief, race, religion, sex or gender, sexual orientation, language, culture and on many other grounds. Discrimination, which is often the result of prejudices people hold, makes people powerless, impedes them from becoming active citizens, restricts them from developing their skills and, in many situations, from accessing work, health services, education or accommodation.

Language is our main form of communication and it plays a powerful role both in contributing to and in eliminating discrimination. People can be hurt, demeaned and offended by discriminatory and derogatory language.

Derogatory language is often dismissed as ‘harmless banter’ that isn’t intentionally hurtful. However when such language goes unchallenged, this has a clear negative impact on young people’s sense of belonging, self-esteem and attainment at school.

GLOBAL CHALLENGE

LOCAL ACTION

Our global issue is discrimination and derogatory language. This is a serious issue that affects many people very severely.

We did multiple actions to spread awareness about the importance of Discrimination and derogatory language and how impactful it has on today’s generation.

As a group, we made two videos per person explaining in our own words the following two questions:

What is it: What is discrimination? Discrimination is an unfair judgment of someone resulting in treating them differently. Common grounds for discrimination are sexual preference, religion and race.

Importance: This is a big problem and can result in severe consequences and this issue should not be taken lightly. Victims of discrimination can be scarred for the rest of their lives. And the problem is that discrimination is not uncommon.

Effects: The effects of discrimination are severe.

Discrimination can lead to extreme feelings of guilt, anxiety, depression and sadness to both the victim and the tormentor.

-Have you ever experienced discrimination or do you know someone who has and how did that make you feel?

-Why is discrimination bad?

We also conducted a survey for the entire year 9 asking them to answer some questions about their own personal encounter with discrimination in their lives and what impact did that have on them. These answers were anonymous and we were glad that people took it serious and answered honestly.

And finally our last one would be more of an experiment that we are going to do to the audience. We’d separate everyone based on their eye color. So everyone with different eye colors would get separated from each

EXPERTS CONSULTED

The LaChat APPEAR team (Association de Parents pour la Promotion d’une Education Anti-Raciste)) From left to right: Karen Eugeni, Kindy Sylla and Alexandra Braum

other. We would then select random individuals and ask them to say hurtful comments to about them. Then we would lecture how brown eyes is superior than other eye colors.

Then we would let them say how it felt for them to be discriminated because of your eye color. Then show them a video of the same experiment tested on older students and how they felt.

Why did we decide to do these actions: for the first action, we wanted to simply raise awareness and tell them about our own personal experience with discrimination.

For the second one, we wanted to let people have a voice to speak. To let them share their own stories with us because that helps them reflect.

And lastly, the third one was to let them feel what discrimination is like and how terrible this could affect one’s future life.

THE TEAM Yilang Wang

Jonathan Klok

Josefin Ahlström

Luke Thomas

Ruby Parker

Aidan Fogarty

Social / Equality

5.2

Gender Equality action: fundraiser D

iscrimination against girls and women in the developing world is a devastating reality. It results in millions of individual tragedies, which add up to lost potential for entire countries. Studies show there is a direct link between a country’s attitude toward women and its progress socially and economically. The status of women is central to the health of a society. If one part suffers, so does the whole (source: children in need).

What are the main obstacles that girls face worldwide?

How can educating girls help to break the pattern of gender discrimination?

EXPERT CONSULTED Jennifer Brant, Director, Innovation Insights.

How can teenage boys help shift the balance of gender equality? What are the roles of boys and men?

Explore the current state of gender in Switzerland and / or the World (see Global Gender Gap Report for example) and consider an innovation that could help address this from a teenage boy’s perspective.

How can boys be gender equality champions? What changes would need to happen?

GLOBAL CHALLENGE

LOCAL ACTION

We spoke about the problem of Gender Equality in our group and thought about all different ways that gender inequality affected the world and how it was unfair.

We spoke further about ways some subjects / topics were affected. We spoke about how Gender Equality affected the families and how it can’t continue. We found out that gender equality is a massive problem in life and we really need to help it.

We are raising funds by different methods (e.g. Social media) and are trying to catch attention and will then give those funds to www.lapouponniere.ch.

If boys’ voices are the only ones that are heard then it leaves the girls powerless to help change. Girls have many qualities and strengths and should be able to contribute in the same way as boys. Everyone has the right to be heard and have the same opportunities, whether male or female.

The women have responsibilities to bring up the children so by helping them we will be helping the next generation understand about equality as well.

They are a charity that is dedicated to helping to improve the lives of women and children in Switzerland. They are completely dedicated to helping young women raise children if aren’t able to themselves. They also help send women to college and look after their children so they are able to take full advantage of their education.

We think that this is a trustworthy company and that they are really helping the children and mothers in need. We want to help them get bigger so they can help even more people.

THE TEAM Lucy Cohen

Bardhyl Nushi

Rose Graymore

Konrad Sacha

Gueorgui Petrov

Etienne Martin

Social / Equality

5.3

Physical Disabilities action: creation of video A

physical disability is any condition that permanently prevents normal body movement and/or control. There are many different types of physical disabilities - they can be temporary or permanent, fluctuating, stable or degenerative, and may affect parts of the body or the whole of it.

What can you do to educate your fellow students about the types and causes of physical disabilities? How do the laws and provisions for people in Switzerland compare to another country (perhaps one in the third world?)

EXPERT CONSULTED Jorge Araya, Secretary of the Committee on the Rights of People with Disabilities.

Often multiple barriers can make it extremely difficult or even impossible for people with physical disabilities to function. From a student’s perspective, they may have experienced barriers to learning that relate to negative perceptions of their disability and low expectations. They may also have missed vital stages of learning during their schooling, affecting language acquisition and the development of literacy. One barrier experienced by many students with physical disabilities is physically accessing the learning environment itself.

GLOBAL CHALLENGE

LOCAL ACTION

We investigated the problem of attitude and treatment towards people with physical disabilities. People with a disability get treated differently, and are often wrongly judged by society, it is something that needs to be changed. Being disabled shouldn’t make a difference and certainly does not justify the way some are treated. The problem isn’t them but the barriers that we create. Those barriers make us treat them like they were different and sick people.

Everyone should be equal and no one should be discriminated because they have a disability. This statement is not true yet; a survey was conducted in Denmark in 2015 on 18,019 Danish citizens. 519 of them had a physical disability and 1398 had a mental disability. The people with disabilities reported higher levels of violence and discrimination. It was found that people with mental disabilities were subject to more violence and discrimination than the rest.

Men with disabilities reported the highest levels of violence and women reported the highest levels of discrimination, humiliation and sexual violence. The severity of the disability didn’t seem to have an impact on the way people were treated but they were all discriminated and treated unequally.

How does your local action link to your global challenge?

The link is that Noah has a disability and so we thought it was a good opportunity to help him feel better, as he is wasn’t feeling good at the moment. We decided to make a video with the aim that it might cheer him up a bit and support him. Our local action was about treating him like everyone else, with empathy, and showing that everyone is equal and deserves to be treated as a person.

Why did you choose to do what you did?

Our action was about making someone with a disability feel more joyful and included while in quarantine. During quarantine many people can feel bored and even lonely. In our school we also heard that someone was dealing with these things therefore, we decided the best way to help him was to make a video for him that would brighten up his day. We wanted to cheer him up during this tough time and discover what he likes. We can share it to show people that those with a disability like the same things we do and we should include them.

What did you discover?

We learned that we are the same and enjoy the same things. Just because you have a disability doesn’t mean people should treat you differently. We often judge wrongly people with disabilities because we don’t know enough about them and it is possible to change that just by sharing a video. If we can prove that social barriers can be broken even in quarantine then it will show people that it is possible to do it every single day.

We just have to accept them as they are.

THE TEAM Tara Revaz

Nicholas Clark

Alena Wachsmuth

Oliver Kewley

Noah Wetzelaer

Anna Demasure

Social / Equality

5.4

The cost of cheap fashion action: podcast C

lothing has become cheaper and cheaper over the last thirty years. Where once teenagers may have received clothes twice a year and/or at special occasions, some now may buy fashion items every week – and throw them away after they’ve been worn a couple of times. However, ‘fast fashion’ comes at a cost.

Investigate the impact of cheap clothing on workers in the cotton industry and the factory. What can consumers do to ensure that the products they buy are helping to create good jobs for workers in the supply chain, and are not produced using forced labour or child labour? How can young people as consumers be encouraged to purchase ethically sourced clothing? What is ‘ethical fashion’? What do our clothing purchases say about who we are?

EXPERT CONSULTED Edward Girardet, Founder, Global Geneva.

Can you raise awareness of ethical fashion around the school campus (especially in relation to brands found locally)? Can you be instrumental in designing and creating a line of ethically produced clothing?

GLOBAL CHALLENGE What is fast fashion/cheap fashion?

Fast fashion is a part of a clothing industry which consists of clothes that are made to start and follow current trends that change really fast. These clothes, sold in mainstream stores are usually made out of cheap materials, and in mass production. They are usually produced by children or underpaid adults that are abused in order to produce massive amounts of cloth. We need to stop buying cheap clothing that is produced unsustainably, as the damage right now is on a very large scale. It is said that the average woman in Australia buys 27 kilos of clothing, only to throw away most of that the next year. only 15% of our clothing is recycled and most of it is dumped after being worn once , when the amount of water used to make a cotton tee shirt could have been enough for a person to have sufficient drinking water for 3 years.

Not only is drinkable water wasted, but washing clothes sends out microplastic to the oceans and contributes greatly to water pollution, making this industry the second largest water polluter/consumer. the inhumane production of this clothing sometimes resembles conditions of very hard labor that has gone on in history, and millions of people are involved in the textile industry.

In fact, only 3% of the clothes Americans

wear is actually made in america. There have been thousands of deaths in accidents due to negligence in the industry, including the sadly famous Rana Plaza building collapse in bangladesh. there are countless problems that come with the labor the workers have to do, but many LEDC countries do not have solid laws when it comes to labor, so it is very possible for children to have to work extreme hours for a barely sufficient amount of money.

While this is all terrible, we have learned that we can change this. fast fashion is based on trends and we need to promote more environmental fashion as something that people will want to buy. prices will be higher but it all comes down to choosing quality over quantity. if you do not have the means to by from small local environmental stores (as well as buying environmental clothing, you also support smaller businesses other than multi-million dollar corporations) plenty of sites and second hand stores are available to buy your clothing at for very cheap.

LOCAL ACTION Our local action is linked to the global issue because we want to raise awareness, and we are planning on doing that by producing a podcast made to inform people of how big and damaging this industry really is. Using facts we are also going to entice people to change and buy better clothing. We choose to do this because it’s a simple yet effective way to quickly raise awareness and podcasts are really entertaining and easy to listen to at anytime (accessibility) and because of the CoronaVirus, we haven’t been able to expand our project like we wished to do.After doing our podcast, we were hit with how serious the issue really is. Our original project before Corona was doing a clothing drive so we had to adapt but a podcast means all age ranges can listen and partake, whereas with a clothing drive, getting the whole y9 involved would be a challenge.

THE TEAM Lorenzo Aedo

Emma El Shami

Sasha Pappe

Marco Di Ianni

Mélina Le Mentec

Arnaud Larochelle

Education

6.1

LGBT action: anonymous survey M

ore than half (55%) of LGBT students have experienced direct bullying, and almost a third of them feel they have been ignored or isolated by other people. This can have an impact on their attendance, achievement, and well-being. Students who experience more victimization are also more likely to have lower grades and to report feeling depressed.

How prevalent is LGBT discrimination in students around the world?

What issues do such individuals face? What are the misconceptions and stigmas that surround LGBT students?

EXPERT CONSULTED Anderson Cavalheiro da Luz, Doctoral Student, Université de Fribourg

What can you do to educate your fellow students about LGBT rights?

Can you be instrumental in helping to address some LGBT issues in the school environment (e.g. writing an anti-bullying policy, targeting and tackling homophobic, biphobic and transphobic language?

GLOBAL CHALLENGE

LOCAL ACTION

The Problem: More than half (55%) of LGBTQ+ students have experienced direct bullying, and almost a third of them feel they have been ignored or isolated by other people.

This can have an impact on their attendance, achievement, and well-being. Students who experience more victimization are also more likely to have lower grades and report feeling depressed.

Originally, we were supposed to take a local action. However, due to the Covid-19 circumstances, we’ve had to make our action hypothetical. We have created an anonymous survey that enables students to talk about their experiences concerning discrimination, and how that has affected their school life.

The Task: Our team’s task is to find out how prevalent LGBTQ+ discrimination is in schools around the world, what issues do such individuals face, what are the misconceptions and stigmas that surround LGBTQ+ students and what can this lead to for them. We plan to spread awareness and alert others about our findings.

Results One of the questions we asked to students of our school: ‘Have you ever been a witness to LGBTQ+ discrimination?’

Out of 200 Responses:

We asked their opinions on how LGBTQ+ issues are handled at our school. We’re also informing everyone about the school psychologist and her availability. With our Action we want to observe if LGBTQ+ discrimination is present in our school and if so we want to make sure it does not take place.

We chose this subject because we think that this is a important subject where people don’t get treated fairly just because of their sexual orientations.

Therefore we think it is of extreme importance to change this.

We will talk to the Rainbow Club for more ideas as to how we can help spread more awareness and understanding of diversity in our school community. We want to show equality is important. .

THE TEAM Siew-eisha Sahi

Marco Tapiero

Olivia Hugo

Iker Guerra

Nathan Page

Cleo Motta

Education

6.2

Future of Education action: survey G

lobalisation, technological innovations, climate and demographic changes and other major trends are creating both new demands and opportunities that individuals and societies need to effectively respond to.

There are increasing demands on schools to prepare students for more rapid economic and social change, for jobs that have not yet been created, for technologies that have not yet been invented, and to solve social problems that have not been anticipated in the past.

2030 may seem a long time away but this is the world in which those who are beginning primary school today will start their professional careers and those who are in secondary school today will become the core group of the prime working age. (source: http://www.oecd.org) Can you be instrumental in designing a school for the future? What will the buildings, environment and learning spaces look like? What will the core curriculum be made up of? Will the role of teacher / learner be different? What part will technology play?

EXPERT CONSULTED David Hawley, Director, Ecolint.

Biliana Vassileva, Social Innovation Coach, Consultant & Trainer.

Think about your own school environment. Can you make any suggestions for improvement based upon solid research? What would you change and why?

Can you arrange to pitch your ideas to Mr. Woods/Dr. Hawley?

GLOBAL CHALLENGE

Some suggestions that we feel could change:

LOCAL ACTION

We feel that our educational system is out of date. Sometimes we study things we are not interested in or are relevant for our future. We are learning the same things that our brothers and sisters learned years ago which we feel that we no longer need to know.

•

We think that there is not enough choice in school right now with the subjects and options that we have to study. Dr Hawley makes sure that the future of Ecolint stays as a community and grows in great ways.

•

Our local action is to contact students and teachers to ask what their opinions are about the future of education and what they would like to change about their school day.

We chose this action because we would like to know what people think about and what could change in their school and what they would like to see in the future.

Local Action: Contact pupils and teacher on their opinions about the future of education

• • •

• •

•

Technology (teach us more skills we will need for the future) Online Schooling (give us a choice to do some subjects online) Different timetable (So we can start later and finish earlier) Add new subjects (more relevant ones for the future) Focus less on content and more on skills (which we need for jobs in the future) New extra- curricular activities (different ones added each year) Green schooling (to help the planet e.g. installation of solar panels for energy, learning more about what WE can do to help) More recycling (and understanding where it goes)

We interviewed students and teachers from our school as well as teachers from other schools too. They gave many ideas a lot of which matched our own. It is clear that an educational change needs to happen - and needs to happen soon to prepare us properly for the future.

THE TEAM Esmé Gembler

Hugo Sandys

Lily Colsenet

Thomas Anderson

Kaia Varnish

Luca Swan

Education

6.3

Refugees and Education action: fundraiser U

NHCR reports that refugees are five times more likely to be out of school than the global average. Only 61 per cent of refugee children have access to primary education, compared with a global average of more than 90 per cent. Without the chance to study, an entire generation is at risk. (source: http://www.unhcr.org) What can you do to educate your fellow students about the plight of refugees?

Why is accessing education especially important in times of displacement?

EXPERT CONSULTED Mr Arafat Jamal, Head, Partnership and Coordination Service, UNHCR.

Can you connect with refugee children in your local community?

What can you do to help enable them to access the education they are entitled to?

Can you think of innovative ways to raise money (or ask for donations) for five backpacks with school equipment ready for May? They can then be donated to local refugee students in the community ready for the start of the school year. Ms Kirkus Vacic can give you more details regarding the students and what equipment they will need.

GLOBAL CHALLENGE

LOCAL ACTION

The problem with having uneducated refugees in a country is that they can’t contribute to the economy. This ends up leading to problems like overpopulation, poverty, and many more.

We are going to raise money by doing a fundraiser. Each person in our group is planning to do some sort of physical activity eg. running. We will be sponsored per km. Alex has already cycled Gex-Bellegarde and back (about 80km) and raised 600chf.

With the money we raise, we hope to buy educational supplies and backpacks for a local refugee family to equip the children with the necessary items to start their new school year. Any additional funds we raise we will ask our expert, Mr.Jamal, to suggest a good cause to donate to.

This is a vicious cycle and in most cases the parents can’t even hope to afford an education for their children, leaving them in the same cycle of poverty as them.

Our Global challenge links to many of the UN’s different SDG’s (Sustainable Development Goals), two of them being related to what we talked about earlier about economic growth and the other two entirely relate to our global challenge (eg. Without a good education it is difficult to get a good job etc…)

Dr David Hawley, Director of Ecolint.

Local Action: - Fundraiser - Sponsors - Donations - Raising awareness

We will also try to connect with a couple of refugees who are currently living in Switzerland and are currently getting scholarships in Geneva at a different campus of Ecolint. We are aware this is a sensitive issue and it may not be appropriate.

THE TEAM Sean Tracy

Alex Tucci

Julian King

Noe Migliorini

Emmanuel Bernard

Nicolas Canovo

Education

6.4

Connecting Classrooms action: connecting to a school in Buthan & making a movie T

he issue of universal access to a “quality education” is at the heart of SDG 4. Part of the definition of a quality education includes collaborative engagement by students with peers globally in this interdependent world.

Can you think of ways in which you can use technology to connect and learn with other students worldwide collaboratively, cross-culturally, and multilingually?

EXPERT CONSULTED Toby Cann, student wellbeing leader, Halcyon School, London

Can you think of ways in which you can use technology to connect and collaborate with the other Ecolint campuses?

Can you be instrumental in connecting with 6 other students in 6 other countries to find out about what it is like to be a student there?

Could you write a film script and producing a short clip entitled ‘a day in the life of a student at Ecolint?’ This film script can then be shared with students in other schools completely different from ours and then compared.

Some schools willing to participate in this would be: Aga Khan School Osh, Kyrgyzstan - WATU school, Tanzania - ELC high school Bhutan (plus you may have other connections yourselves) It would be great if you could get one school from each of the continents to participate!!!

GLOBAL CHALLENGE

LOCAL ACTION

Our world issue is mainly focused on the 4th sustainable development goal: quality education. We were happy to have this subject because it is crucial in so many ways.

It is especially important to provide everyone with opportunities and make sure they reach their full potential instead of wasting many possible talents. For example, 260 million children globally do not have access to school. Every child has the possibility to do great things like coming up with a great innovation or even just turning their life around. We are investigating our problem by means of our action.

Our action is connecting through a Google meet with students our age from Bhutan and asking them questions about their educational system. We asked them to film clips of a day in their life and we did the same.

We then made a movie with some of the best ones from both schools We did this to find out about education systems in other countries and then compare them to our own systems of education.

Obviously we were faced with the huge obstacle that students at both our schools were no longer going as normal because of the Covid19 virus. Instead of seeing it as an issue, we decided to use it to our advantage.

Our new focus was to see how both our schools and governments (another factor that affects education) adapted and dealt with the pandemic. We made note of the different ways our countries were operating the schools during the pandemic.

A good quality education is one that provides all learners with capabilities they require to become economically productive, develop sustainable livelihoods, contribute to peaceful and democratic societies and enhance individual well-being.

THE TEAM Morris Pendergast

Sebastiano Moggi

India Woodall

Sean Tracy

Olivia Michielsen

Malik Warakaulle

support the SDGzine New models for SDG innovation From student ideas to product acceleration with the University of Geneva

DEC 2019

MARCH 2020

Collaborative publication & research on the sustainable development goals WWW.SDGZINE.ORG

Collaborative publication on the sustainable development goals WWW.SDGZINE.ORG

Collaborative publication & research on the sustainable development goals WWW.SDGZINE.ORG

#03

#02

#01

DEC 2019

Scaling education for the SDGS

SPECIAL SCHOOL EDITIONS

The material issue.

Ideas and projects on SDG4 Quality Education

Includes 2018 SDG SUMMER SCHOOL research projects: 3.01

3.02

3.03

AT YOUR CERVIX

A CLEANAIR GREECE

MOTOSAFE

Early detection of cervical cancer

Non-compliance with smoke-free laws (SFL) in public places such as restaurants

Improve motorcycle safety through affordable and non-distracting technology

10.01

11.01

iDOCTOR

YES HELMET

Diagnosis of diabetic retinopathy based on AI algorithm

Encouraging helmet-wearing to increase the safety for bicyclists

SDGZINE 01 - OUT NOW

5.01

FEM. FRIENDLY Mapping Female friendly Toilets

SDGZINE 02 - IN PREPARATION

Building an SDG-conscious ecosystem Partners, people and projects SDGS & innovation Helping companies and organisations innovate while aligning with the SDGS SDG acceleration Repository of concepts from the Master program at the SDG Solution Space SDGS & Fablabs Linking makerspaces and fab labs to the SDGS

SDGZINE 03 - CALLING FOR PROJECTS

SDGS & Education Create programs for schools to add SDGS to the curriculum SDGS & art & design Thought provoking concepts from artists, designers and other creative thinkers Accelerating talent Showcasing projects creating sustainable change Tools & inspiration Sharing best practices, exhibition concepts & hands-on tools

SDGZINE SPECIAL SCHOOL EDITION #1 THIS ISSUE

How can you help?

Subscribe Support Become a partner Register on addictlab.com and join the project www.sdgzine.org or mail info@sdgzine.org

share this SDGzine & recycle Think about what you do with this printed issue NAME

company/school

date

comment

To avoid paper waste, please pass on this magazine to a friend before archiving or recycling it. Look for recycling ideas on www.sdgzine.org