Sdg 11: Sustainable cities and communities
I know this happened a while ago, but was waiting for the perfect pics to come up.
We celebrated the UN day on 7th October, and it was centred around SDG 11 i.e. Sustainable Cities and Communities. The idea was to develop awareness on this SDG, and inculcate the understanding of this goal on an international and local level i.e. through the lens of Sri Lanka.
We started off the day with flag parade, wherein I was the flag bearer of India (being the oldest). It was a good way to appreciate our nationality and culture, and to showcase how diversified yet inclusive our international community at OSC really is. What was particularly interesting was the UN flag group, to include those kids who didn’t identify with any specific nationalities. It was a pure display of melting pot, and how various people were dressed in their own traditional attire. Credits to Mr. Lockwood, who took a group photo for the Indian crowd.
After that it was the main part of the day. The COMUN kids, including me, who had prepared a presentation to educate different grades levels on the topic of SDG 11. Me and Matthew (COMUN members) along with Vinuda and Yousuf (fellow DP classmates) were allotted Grade 10. Being the biggest grade in school (in terms of class size), it was one of the biggest challenge for us. Hence, planning this session and making it engaging was conducive for the participation of the audience. To begin with, we had already split the whole grade in 2 sub-grades, one group being with me and Matthew. Our topic of focus was clean and green energy, from Sri Lanka’s perspective.
Photo credit Mr. Benson
We began the session with presenting the overarching idea of SDG 11, and what it meant. This gave an overview to the students, which was then followed by going into the specificities of Energy Sources. The plan of this session was to not go by conventional style of teaching the kids, but letting them explore and interpret the information in their own way through group discussion.
Example infographic on Hydropower
For this, we made 4 working stations around the classroom, allotting each station a clean Renewable energy source: Hydropower, Wind, Solar and Nuclear. The infographics guided them to get an understanding of what the energy source has to offer, and we also made sure to mentor them while they were looking through the infographics. After 5 minutes of exploration, we made the groups switch stations and ensured that they went through all the infographics during the session. This allowed them to compare, and contrast each of the energy sources. And towards the end of the session, we made them choose the energy source they think would be the best from Sri Lanka’s point of view. What was meant to be a quick debate to end the session, turned into a fiery battle between the sides of hydropower and nuclear. Overall, we were happy that our audience was so engaged in the process, hence making this session rather successful (cheers to Jed).
The session ended, and now it was feast time. The favourite part of the UN day celebration i.e. a food fest. Each one of us devoured on the food, tasting a bit from each country. My favourite was of course the Indian cuisine. It encompassed a range of Indian foods: Vade, Samosa, Jalebi to name some. It was rather a treat, since I also tasted some of the Sri Lankan foods. The Murukku was delicious, and I enjoyed taking snack bites out of it.
Past the delicious treat we enjoyed, our day ended with us going to preschool and teaching them a bit of Spanish. It was rather very basic, but we taught them 1-5 counting numbers in Spanish. For the ease of it, Isa (one of our fellow members) made a song out of it, so we were able to recite that to the kids.
Overall, I would say that this UN day was a great success. This was my first time celebrating it in person (thanks to DLP), but it felt so welcoming and hospitable. Pep (the Secretariat and the organizer of the UN day) was rather phenomenal, and I think each one of us enjoyed this day and the activities it had to offer.