GISS Steering Committee meeting

Before school this morning, we had our first steering committee meeting. This involves every student and staff leader of each GISS committee.
This meeting presents itself as an opportunity to compare notes with other committees, to explain your progress, or maybe your hindering, on certain goals you need to achieve, and it is a great way to keep up with deadlines and get help troubleshooting problems, or simply to work side by side with the other committees.

As this was our first meeting, we spoke mainly of our debuts, and everything is on track to a certain extent. Mrs Zents and I explained how we were going to contact the local schools for the Golden Hearts Scholars applications, and we discussed our options for expert panel topics and panelists.
Thanks to this meeting, every committee was able to understand where they were lagging, and where they were doing well.
Meeting up with only the leaders of the committees was a very good idea, as for the most part, it is the leaders of the committees who are aware of what is going on within their group, and it makes for a much more efficient meeting than we would have had with 40+ people in the room.

So far, things seem to be going very well!

JUMP! Seminar

This weekend, every student in the GISS student leadership team attended a two-and-a-bit day seminar with three facilitators coming from Hong Kong, Paris and Nairobi. they were here to teach us about how to become facilitators during the conference, as we will all be leading groups of approximately 20 students, and as many of us are brand new to this type of public speaking and acting, we needed the help.

Over the two days, we managed to become a real, functioning team that was able to trust and rely on one another. We participated in psychological discussions and activities, played energising games and began to understand how we could be great facilitators, and how we could become a great team.

This training has now prepared us not only for the conference, but also for our futures after school: these tips and tricks for being confident and a good leader have helped us improve ourselves in such a short time period, and the effects of this seminar will stay with us for a very long time.

This awe-inspiring, confidence and trust-inspiring weekend has marked us all, and thanks to it, we will not walk into the conference cold, unsure of what to do, and wary of our partner. No. We will walk into that conference will confidence, happiness and trust in our partner and in ourselves. And we know now that we can be the ones to make a difference, for we re-learned Richard's 20 Global Problems and thought up new and innovative ways of solving them that might one day become a reality.

I do believe that we have become a proper team thanks to this, and that by forcing ourselves to learn how to deal with mistakes and problems that we will face very soon, we have prepared ourselves to overcome these mistakes and problems.

We also found out that the money we paid for this weekend will be put to good use: a large amount of it will go towards doing another seminar just like this one for students who neither have the money or the opportunity to participate in such an event. Hopefully, the seminar will be for the Golden Hearts Scholars just before the GISS conference. I feel as though this is a really good idea, as it will provide the GHS team with trust and a bond before the conference even begins: they will already be empowered.

GISS student leadership team applications

To be a part of the amazing GISS student leadership team, a student needs to prove that they are dedicated to the conference, to saving the world and to making a change for the better. This is why we give out application forms to those who, like us, are passionate about making a difference in the world for its betterment. Around 30 students applied for the 24 spots available.

To promote the event, I wrote an article for the link:

Do you want to be a part of the coolest, the most amazing student conference in Africa?

I thought so.

Well here’s your chance: this year, ISK’s GIN (Global Issues Network) group is hosting the annual Global Issues Service Summit, (GISS for short), a student conference that addresses today and tomorrow’s social and environmental problems.

It is a three-day conference: two days of interactive student and expert workshops along with world-renowned keynote speakers, with the third day being a service day: the GISS students all go out on a day-long trip to some of Nairobi’s local environmental and community-oriented organisations to help out with projects and have a good time.

This GISS’s theme is ‘Amani: One World, One Harmony’, which means peace and unity in Kiswahili.

This conference will change your take on how you can make things different in the world today.

Starting next week, signup sheets will be posted around the campus, so if you do want to join, pick one up and fill it out.

We hope that we’ll see you joining our Student Leadership team!

The point of doing this was really to encourage students and their parents to come and participate in this event, and I think that it must have worked. Writing promoting articles at this stage of the conference process is good practice, as I am aware of the impending increase in work and demand, and the need for sponsors, volunteers and chaperones.

We have now finalised our list of students on this team, and though there is a majority of seniors, there is a fair share of students from the other grades too.

Back to Track & Field

Today, I went back to full track and field training, as I had been missing some of the training sessions due to football. Coming back was a little bit sad for me, as I had hoped to be part of the ISSEA team this year. However, as that had not happened, I went back to the sport that I know for sure I am good at: running.
Going back to running full time is really good for me, as it gives me the opportunity to ficus on bettering myself and reinforcing my relationships within our huge team.
Hopefully I'll be back to speed very soon, as I feel that clashing training sessions might have diminished my ability to perform well in both sports. Thanks to this experience, short as it may have been, I now know that I need to pace myself so that I may do well in whatever sport I want to do. Focusing on a single sport instead of two is a good plan, and I hope that I may persevere and become a great runner.
(I am still training at home for football, as my hopes to compete have not diminished just quite yet.)

Football (or Soccer)

Football tryouts were scheduled to start one monday morning (August 20th), but due to the Eid national holiday, it was reported to wednesday morning (August 22nd). What was supposed to be a three-session turned into a 3 week period, ending on monday september 3rd. This was a great experience for all of the girls trying out, as it made us into a real team that could trust and work with one another.

The strong team building skills I received during this period of time are key for my future participation in sports teams, and it helps today, as it makes me more confident and assertive.

Unfortunately, I was cut from the team due to my involvement with the track and field team: the coaches could not be certain, if the occasion should arise, whether I would choose football, or whether I would choose track; and they couldn't take that chance. I understand this very well, as commitment to a team is very important, even though I was more than ready to only do one sport and stay in football. I believe that disappointments are key while growing up, and without them, we would never be able to grow up to be mature and 'weathered' people. So I will try again next semester for tryouts, because giving up won't do anything good for me. Perseverance is something we all need to learn, and I think that I am learning it right now: I will keep on practicing, whether it be at home or at school, to better myself for the next football tryouts.

Shangilia Orientation Day

I have been a participator and the leader of this GIN trip for 2 years now, but this year, things have changed: it has been assimilated into the school-wide Wednesday trip group, and is now open to middle schoolers. This is a great idea, but the problem was that none in GIN knew about this change, and high schoolers who had been dedicated members of this trip were now being denied places.
The Shangilia orientation day was last week, on the 29th of August. On that day, we met up in a group in the Art centre to discuss our plans, goals and classes. We divided up our group accordingly, and after a while, we played energizers to bond as a team. I must say that I was displeased with some new members of this trip, who were not taking ti seriously, and looked like they had no wish to be there.

However, this problem has been resolved: after talking to our GIN teachers, our CAS co-ordinator and our high school principal, we said that we would let the middle schoolers stay on the trip, but that all high schoolers had to be dedicated to attending the trip, and so we managed to get our old, dedicated members back on the trip.

Today was our first real Shangilia visit, and it was wonderful seeing the kids' faces light up when they saw new people and their old friends, too. It was like a huge family reunion!
I know now that if you know that something isn't right, or is unfair, and it needs to be changed, then it can be changed. All you have to do is change it yourself, because no one else will do it for you, as you may be the only one who knows that something is wrong. And everything turns out well in the end.

First Human Resources meeting

The Human Resources committee of the GISS conference 4 sub-committees:

-the expert panel committee, which deals with researching, contacting and securing "motivational and informative" expert panel participants.
our six panels are: Amani- peace and reconciliation, Grassroots solutions, Art & social justice, HIV/AIDS, Conservation and Water.
-the student workshop committee, which organises the visiting schools' student workshops
-the sustainability teams committee, which organises the multiple student teams that facilitate dialogue and discussion, and that foster networking between students from different countries and schools.
-the Golden Hearts Scholarship program, which tends to the 17 students coming from local, non-international schools.

Being the student leader of this committee is a fresh experience for me: playing such a major role in the conference is so daunting, because I am aware that if our committee does something wrong, then there is the possibility that our mistake affects the whole conference negatively. On the positive side, however, we are in charge of the people attending and participating in the conference, which puts us into a very high position of power: we decide what goes, what doesn't, with our two main teachers, Mrs Lavender and Mrs Houriez.