By Owen Haywood
Sustainability and Eco Lead
After becoming a father for the second time on NYE 2022, I was able to re-evaluate my lifestyle and reflect on how to improve myself for my family, my community, including at Northbridge International School Cambodia, and the planet.
New year’s resolutions are frequently made but maybe seldom stuck to. This year I decided to get fit and plan to train for an Iron Man by the time I am 40 years old (just 2 years away), to spend more time with family in nature, and to increase my impact on the green movement that is sweeping the planet.
While there is much environmental news that focuses on the doom and gloom of changing weather systems and destruction of nature, there are still many people doing some amazing things in the field of sustainability around the globe. For example, a company from South America have just designed a torch that is powered by seawater (waterlight.com.co). What? That is incredible.
Whenever I feel disengaged about the climate crisis, I visit happyeconews.com to find out the fabulous things that are happening around the globe. On this week’s top 5, I have been reading about Argentina’s plans to use solar-powered robots to clean its waterways, water-filled windows to cool buildings, and a man from Senegal who plans to plant 5 million trees. There are lots of interesting people doing marvelous things around the globe to make our planet greener.
At NISC, there are some wonderful students planning some brilliant activities for Earth Day this year. The Eco Council students have analysed the themes (climate literacy, vote earth, end plastics, plant trees, global cleanup and sustainable fashion) from Earth Day this year (earthday.org/earth-day-2023/) and are in the process of organizing an Earth Week, with a host of activities across different grade levels.
We are so lucky to have an enthusiastic team of environmentalists who are keen to spread the green movement in our local community and throughout Cambodia. Watch this space for a clean, green Earth week!
World Children's Day (WCD) is celebrated on November 20 each year to promote international togetherness, awareness among children worldwide, and improving children's welfare.
The readers of this article have all likely experienced a ‘traditional’ exam setting. Rows of desks, pen and paper, and exam papers that are primarily constructed to test knowledge and recall of the course content. There is certainly some value to an exam paper that assesses a student’s knowledge, but ultimately, knowledge and recall represents a very narrow range of the skills actually needed in the modern world. Recognising this, the IB has taken an revolutionary look at assessment in the middle years, with the eAssessment.
