Carrying out my CAS Project

My previous post outlined how Milo and I planned our CAS Project, for which we raised awareness and collected funds to support reforestation in Borneo. That post also displayed how we addressed the learning outcome ‘Demonstrate how to initiate and plan a CAS experience’. To do the actual project, we started with the posts, posting three posts a week. The three types of posts, of which one was posted each week, were posts showing the beauty of the rainforests to let the audience have an emotional connection, posts showing what the problem is and finally, posts giving information on how to help. We thought this is a good method to get maximum support and initiate as much positive change as possible. By having broken up the creation of the posts (as well as all other work for the project) between ourselves and communicated our individual progress, I realized the advantages of working collaboratively, such as higher effectiveness and a larger variety of ideas (learning outcome 5).

Screenshot of our Instagram site, with a few posts already published.

The fundraiser at the Food and Fun was not possible to be held. This was due to the COVID-19 causing our school to close. This was really unfortunate, not only as we could not prepare fora exams as well and have less time with our friends in our last few weeks at school, but also as we had a project planned with which we would’ve made a difference. Nonetheless, we of course continued to post our three types of posts in order to create awareness online.

Our project, although being significantly reduced in effectiveness, had very important intentions. The deforestation of Borneo is not only horrible as it drives local wildlife to extinction, but also because it will increase the climate crisis. Rainforests are crucial for absorbing carbon from the atmosphere, and deforestation prevents parts of the huge amount of carbon we expel into the atmosphere to be absorbed. The effects of deforestation will therefore not only felt by future generations through the absence of animals that we still have the luck of encountering, but also through higher temperatures and unpredictable climatic events. As such, we truly engaged with an issue of global significance (learning outcome 6), which is important as I believe everyone has some social responsibility towards this. The parts of the project that we conducted were still valuable in teaching Milo and I first of all, how to find a problem that can be addressed effectively. Although Borneo was our first idea, a local wetland rehabilitation would have been more effective but we called this off due to difficulties in communicating with our partners. This brings me to the second aspect that challenged me, which is communication. Things had to be planned well ahead and tasks split up among us, and we had to make sure our posts are easy to read and contain persuasive language for us to meet our goal at creating awareness.

One Response

  1. ilockwood at |

    It’s unfortunate that the current situation with COVID-19 has put an end to your plans with this CAS Project. You had some worthy ideas and a personal experience from being in Borneo to build a good campaign of awareness. This is quite a good wrap up but I would like to see you tie in and make explicit links to the Seven IB Learning Outcomes (not necessarily all of them but at least the key ones). Can you go back and make those edits?
    Thanks,
    Mr. Lockwood

    Reply

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