How we operate the IGC Award in our indiivdual contexts- November 2009

[Boyd Roberts]

This month, please contribte a brief report on how the Award is implemented in your context.

Please remember that this is intended to be helpful to those in other centres, or to schools considering becoming a centre. Please try to give information that you would find useful or helpful from other centres.
Feel free to do this however you wish, but below are some specific headings or questions, and it may be easier to respond to these.

What age are Award participants?

How many participants do you have, currently?

How do you advertise the Award / recruit participants?

Is the Award “stand alone” or is it incorporated into other activities – such as home room /tutor groups / personal-social-health education / citizenship education ?

Does your programme incorporate other existing activities and programmes - for instance service?

How do participants assist in the running and operating the programme?

Who acts as mentors for the Award? Is it just you, as coordinator? Are other colleagues / parents / adults involved? Are there any students acting as mentors?


Please give examples of aspects of the Award in your context that you think may be of particular interest to others.

Any advice / suggestions for prospective / new centres?

[Boyd Roberts]

Judith Shorrocks from Academia Britanica Cuscatleca, El Salvador writes:


We have two teachers who are sharing the coordination - Walter Arevalo and Carmen Villalta. Walter already runs what we call the Guardians of the Environment which is really taking off in the school. We have appointed two grade 11 and two grade 12 students as our Student IGCA Leaders (they will also do the Bronze Award). Two of them are working with Carmen mainly focussing on the Cultural Awareness Strand and on Raising the quality of reflections. The other two work with Walter focussing on the personal global footprint idea and on making a difference (influence and involvement).

All the students (about 20 grade 7 to 9 but mainly grade 7) come every Tuesday and they are split into 4 groups (one with each student leader) and their task is to learn about a global issue over a 4 week period (roughly). The student leaders have to prepare the material and the younger kids do the "research" and put together a small presentation for the others to see at the end of the 4 week period. We will do this twice, so they at least do learn something about 8 global issues.

During this time they also will need to have a couple of reflection sessions. One of our student leaders is already blogging and others are encouraged to contribute (they are doing well - have a look http://igca0910.edublogs.org/).

They are also going to discuss what personal commitments each wants to make for themselves - bags, light bulbs, dripping taps kind of stuff and they will need to commit to that and reflect on their efforts.

Obviously, they are all involved in the Guardians which is about recycling and tree planting and other initiatives throughout the year.

The IGCA group is looking for a major charity commitment and we are considering helping a group of women in a very poor community who are trying to work on various cottage industries like arts and crafts in order to get enough books to have a library for teh children in that community. We still need to visit it and have discussions in order to see how safe the area is etc. There is no rush to decide but I would like then to have two large charity events this year for fund raising for one particular cause as well as helping that community in other ways.

After Christmas, the Tuesday regular meeting will focus on cultural awareness rather than global issues per se.

[Parag Patel]

Mr Andrew Corney (now at Dulwich College Shanghai) set up the IGC award at The English Academy, Kuwait. It was run successfully and a few pupils gained the bronze award, and one even managed the silver. Alwyn Roberts and myself have taken on the 'new wave' of students to help them along. We generally let one or two of the bronze award pupils share their experiences from last year and ask the new group for new ideas and ways to adapt previous projects. One example (from today) was to interview a domestic worker from a different culture and country (similar format to last year) but this year new students have decided to visit a local embassy to interview mistreated/runaway maids and conduct secondary research in order to raise awareness in the form of an article that can either be blogged, published or put on a website e.g. IGC ning site?!? The idea is a good one, and children are aware that they may not be granted permission to conduct interviews but all are willing to try to raise awareness even if it is only through secondary research. Some have also suggested that we look into the opposite scenario as many employers have been mistreated by their domestic helpers, this way they can have a better, more balanced article. Watch this space!

What age are Award participants? 11-16

How many participants do you have, currently? 11

How do you advertise the Award / recruit participants? Assembly, word of mouth.

Is the Award “stand alone” or is it incorporated into other activities – such as home room /tutor groups / personal-social-health education / citizenship education ? Stand alone (after school club)

Does your programme incorporate other existing activities and programmes - for instance service? Sometimes linked to International Award and ISA (whole school initiative)

How do participants assist in the running and operating the program? Brainstorm ideas, download films and share articles/stories of interest.

Who acts as mentors for the Award? Is it just you, as coordinator? Are other colleagues / parents / adults involved? Are there any students acting as mentors? Two coordinators, act more as moderators, and use open questioning to promote discussion.


Please give examples of aspects of the Award in your context that you think may be of particular interest to others.

Any advice / suggestions for prospective / new centres? Not yet... both of us are new at this!

[Peter Muir]

Firstly – many apologies for making my first post! I will, from now on, be more dedicated to using this collaborative medium.

This coming August Bali International School will be starting its second group of students in the IGC Award.
In the 2009-2010 academic year, although we initially planned to introduce the IGC Award in August, other commitments got in the way and we did not start the award until January. Information on the Award was shared through newsletters, assemblies and homerooms. It was voluntary for students in the high school to participate, and we had a small but dedicated group of seven students (a few more started but were too busy with other extra-curricular activities to continue – it seems that the students most interested in the IGC Award were also the busiest). Initially we held meetings once a week at lunchtime. We went through the Award an area at a time, with a number of weeks given to students to complete activities in that area. Students themselves came up with what activities/action they would take and presented these to the rest of the group to seek their approval before commencing in the activities. This was good as it involved lots of interesting discussion and gave the students ownership. On a given date students then gave a presentation to the group, stating what they did, presenting material and reflecting upon the experience. The group then decided if their peer had successfully completed that section of the award. Teachers were involved in these discussions also. Students also shared their material on a google site – https://sites.google.com/a/baliis.net/bis-igcaward/ (this is not quite complete). The students were able to use part of their IGC Award activities as credit towards their Global Citizenship Programme graduation requirements. In the end all students successfully completed the Award. It was good to have all students involved in direction and decision making, however this would be more difficult with a larger group.

This coming academic year – We will conduct the award in two parts.
Firstly, we will follow the above as a guide for students between grades 7-10 who wish to participate. Those students who already have the bronze level, in addition to conducting their own activities, will be asked as a group to lead the other students who join. We will rely a lot on online sharing of reflections as this will save face-to-face time, something which our students seem to have little of.
Secondly, all grade 6 students will be required to participate in the IGC as a part of their timetabled ‘Global Citizenship Programme’. They will have fortnightly lessons as a grade. The teacher will give much guidance, but the students will still be required to choose their own individual activities to fulfil the requirements of the award. We will again involve peers in discussing and making decisions about the adequateness of the work that other students do. I see this, with teacher guidance, as a valuable exercise.

[Boyd Roberts]

Many thanks for posting this Peter.

It gives everyone a very good idea about how you have been operating the Award in Bali, and how you plan to do so next year.

I was very interested to hear about how participants are invovled in the programme throughout - sharing their ideas for activities/actions with the other participants, and getting agreement of the group before going ahead, and then taking part in deciding whether other participatns have made progress and satisfactorly completed activities.

Thanks for sharing the link to the reflections. I've had a quick look at these, and will enjoy reading them more fully later. It's great that students are making these available for others to read - and reflect on.