Luca and I had planned a lot for our CAS project, all the way from spreading awareness of the Bornean deforestation with Instagram to making custom-designed shirts which, would be sold at a Bake sale we would hold during the annual food and fun fair. The sad reality eventually resulted in the cancelation of many of our plans despite the preparations we would already have made.
However, not everything would be lost due to the COVID-19 outbreak. Being the resilient and dedicated members of CAS that we are, Luca and I would set out to create posts for the Instagram profile and try to get the page exposed to as many people as possible. Initially, we had planned for the food and fun fair to be the opportunity to advertise the page to parents and students but, now we would have to try and get our classmates to spread the word of our page which, brings considerably fewer followers for our cause.
Making the posts at first was quite tedious and difficult since we had to establish different templates for each of the posts and write up info that would go into each of our posts. After making a couple of posts, however, it would become easier and easier as we would get used to the overall format and method of making the posts. The easiest posts that would be made were those consisting of photos that Luca took while on a trip to Borneo. In addition to this, Luca would also write up a brief description of each of the posts to give the audience an idea of what is happening in the photo. The other posts were a bit more difficult as we would have to go through the internet to find these sources of information and deem if they are worth putting on our page and if they get the message across of “conserving the Bornean rainforests”.
What would be left of our Instagram journey would be to post all of the posts that we had previously made on a strict schedule and with the correct order. this would go on for about 1 and a half months making 3 posts per week. While our follower count only increased to 22 followers it was again, due to the inability to advertise the page on our food and fun fair stall. The image below shows the general outline of our page.
The general outline of our Instagram profile (left is the fact post, center are the appreciation posts while on the right are the action posts.)
The T-shirts, on the other hand, had a lot of planning put into them but sadly wouldn’t be able to be sold on the food and fun fair. However, the process of designing and planning the shirts would also be a good experience for our CAS project. The first step of the designs would be to draw up some sketches of what the T-shirts should look like. This step took a little while but eventually we came up with 2 designs for the shirts.
our first design
the second version of our design
From these 2 designs, we chose to go ahead with the second one as it was more visually pleasing and got the intended message across of reducing palm oil usage for the sake of the orangutans as seen on the front of the shirt. Once this was decided I would get round to making the front image on photoshop, which was clearly a difficult task. I would also use applications such as Prisma to alter the overall style of the image to look more artistic. Below is the example of the transformation that I had prepared for the creation of these T-shirt designs.
The original image taken by Luca
The altered image made by me in photoshop and Prisma.
Finally, for the bake sale, Luca and I would have set up a table with brochures and food at the food and fun fair. The food would have been planned to be made of sustainable food sources that don’t require palm oil (since that would be rather hypocritical). I had planned to make waffles while Luca would have made a selection of cakes and desserts. The profits made by this bake sale would have been donated to the reforestation efforts in Borneo but, due to the strict curfew, we sadly could not hold this bakesale.
In conclusion, despite having planned so much for the eventual CAS project, much of it could not come to fruition. However, we were still able to maintain one aspect of our CAS blog: the Instagram profile. Overall this CAS project has not only taught me much about the issues in Borneo regarding deforestation, but it has also shown me how to work collaboratively with others (Luca) in order to plan s bake sale and merchandise. I would say that the CAS project was a minor success since even though we could not finish the project overall, Luca and I were still able to design the T-shirt and complete the Instagram profile in addition to planning our whole course of action for the bakesale.