As we wrapped up our 2024 Spring Project Week and celebrated student leadership, the campus was filled with signs of spring. Every school year, we have two special weeks called Project Weeks. One is in the fall, and the other is in the spring, just before the seasonal school break. During these weeks, all students focus on their Leadership projects for a whole week. These times are great for seeing how our students are progressing in their Leadership practice and projects.
Student-led Projects for Sustainability
Sustainability was a key theme for many student-led projects.
The Mission Sustainable CAS convinced Karuizawa town to implement a more sustainable plastic bag for garbage collection. As featured in this article (Japanese only), some districts have started distributing bags made from at least 20% rice resin produced from inedible rice.
Grade 10 students Aya and Zola went to Kamiyama, a town in Tokushima on Shikoku Island, for their “Food Path” project. They wanted to see how the city supports local food and use these ideas to improve the cafeteria at UWC ISAK by offering more local food choices. They visited a local school serving almost only local food in its cafeteria, an agricultural residential school, an outdoor elementary school, and the Food Hub Project restaurant, an initiative to revitalize Kamiyama’s aging town through local food.
Grade 10 students Ritsu and Nhan are creating an intelligent temperature controller that will help save energy and money and make it easier to control heating without having to turn radiators on and off by hand. Their project has three main steps: first, they want to put this new system in all the classrooms at KAC during this school year. Next, they plan to set it up in the Asama building in the Fall of 2024. After that, they will check how well it works before thinking about putting it in the places where students live.
Another Grade 11 CAS project team picked up trash on beautiful but polluted beaches in Ishigaki, one of the Okinawan islands in the south of Japan.
Students Helping Students: A Focus on Education
Our students from more than 80 countries know how much an education can change a life and the impact of digital tools on one’s education. As such, Grade 11s Parizad and Maryam and Grade 12 Rosalie offered volunteer workshops and provided computers through a fundraising campaign at an all-girls school in Bangladesh. The Grade 11 Project Nepal CAS team (Dylan, Tsering, Tseten, Sayaka, and Zamir) delivered 10 computers from Japan as well as books to a public library in Kathmandu. Project Nepal was started by a student from our pioneer Class of 2017, Himanshu, whom the team met together with another ’17 alum, Karma.
Social Impact and Engagement with the Local Community
Some students looked at how to make communities better, like helping deaf people be more included in society or making the day brighter for people living in a retirement home.
Grade 10 students Annie and Yui, part of the “I See Life” project, set up an American Sign Language workshop at UWC ISAK and visited a high school for deaf students in Nagano. They aim to increase understanding of hearing disabilities and teach others about sign language. Additionally, they’re creating technology that can recognize sign language. They spent a lot of time programming and teaching the technology to recognize a few words in Japanese Sign Language. Their efforts have led to impressive results!
Grade 10 students Ann, Ananya, and Terri started a project for their Japanese class that saw them team up with a local nursing home to create pleasant experiences for its residents. This project not only enhanced their leadership skills but also their proficiency in Japanese, as they built new connections with community members. Discover more about their journey in another Leaders Beacon Blog article.
These are only a few of the many student achievements during last Project Week. Read more Leadership updates on our Leaders Beacon Blog.
