After a few rounds of competitive bidding from a few very enthusiastic bidders, the HAT finally went to Gabriel with the winning bid of 800 kr! The second-highest bidder, Rektor John, after conceding graciously, decided to contribute his highest bid of 700 kr to DROP anyway. So the HAT fetched a total of 1500 kr for DROP.
A very big thank-you to Gabriel, John, and Matthew from the Chair of DROP – Pete.
After a whole week of internal emotional turmoil and external multiple-party lobbying, our beloved Human Rights teacher has finally consented to depart from his beloved signature hat for the benefit of DROP.
He is willing to submit his signature hat for an auction – all proceeds to go to DROP.
Here are some detailed views of the HAT.
The auction will be held at the Graduation Dinner on May 23, 2008.
We are a group of four students (Gustav, Ghariza, Lisa and Vedran) led by staff member, Ashok Pratap Singh. The five of us are a group of avid and dedicated members who strive to create awareness of the College’s level of energy consumption and to equip all members of the College with positive energy-saving habits.
Throughout the year, we have started several initiatives such as the Inter-House Energy Saving Competition, Lights Out Day, Batteries Collection Drive, presentations during College Meetings and putting out a suggestion box for the submission of proposals to improve the environmental situation in the College.
The Lights Out Day was a joint initiative between the College’s Link Group and the Ozonizers. Lights Out Day this year was held on 22 April 2008 in conjunction with the Earth Day. For a period of one week, the Ozonizers team measured the energy consumption of each House, and each school building (such as Uncle Tom’s Cabin, the Cantina, etc) to find the average amount of energy consumed by the members of the College each day. After calculations, the College managed to save 200NOK from the Lights Out day. The House which consumed the least energy was Sweden House and they were awarded with a fruit basket for their efforts.
In addition to this, we also initiated a Batteries Collection Drive which started a week before Easter Break. We went around all rooms and all houses on the Teachers’ Hill to collect used batteries. We brought these batteries to a recycling plant in Malmo, Sweden during the Break.
A suggestion box was also put in the Cantina for students to submit their proposals on how to improve the environmental situation in the College. As another initiative to create awareness of our College’s level of energy consumption, we presented various energy-saving methods to the College during weekly College meetings.
The winner of the Inter-House Energy Saving Competition for the 2007-2008 academic year is Iceland House.
We, the Ozonizers believe that we’ve had a fruitful year. We’ve enjoyed trying to formulate different ways to promote energy-saving habits and also working towards inculcating an awareness of the Colleges level of energy consumption. In the long run, we hope to make our community more aware about the current environmental situation, and ultimately help the College save money in the area of electricity consumption.
We’re looking forward to another great year ahead!
-The Ozonizers Team
(Ashok, Gustav, Ghariza, Lisa and Vedran)
The SOS group aims at promoting the awareness of the work of the SOS villages in the school and fund raise money to support five children in an SOS village in Mauritius.
This year we have organized many events. We kicked off the year with an Open Mic café in which students from SOS villages made a presentation concerning their background and how the villages changed their lives.
Another event was the selling of SOS hearts before Christmas. Schoolmates had the opportunity to convey their care and love for each other by writing their blessings.
The last major event took place during Valentine’s Day. The group prepared roses, cards and cookies for schoolmates to share their feelings to those that they love. It was a successful and exhilarating event.
With the immense support from both the students and the teachers, we were able to fund raise a large sum of money and managed to meet our funding target. Throughout the whole year, the group kept in contact with the children that we support and sent them Christmas cards so that they will know a bit more about our college.
In the future, the SOS group is looking forward to organize more activities to further arouse people’s awareness of the SOS organization worldwide and continue to foster the education of the children in Mauritius.
Haugland Rehabiliteringssenter is our closest neighbour. Patients come to the centre for a variety of health related reasons and spend between three and six weeks here. Students are involved in providing a range of weekly activities for the visiting patients ranging from kayaking and climbing, to craft and dance, as well as a weekly tour of the college. Once a week the students also host ‘Kose Kveld’, which is an evening of activities and games, musical performance and personal stories. Some students also support patients in activities related to their health programme such as water confidence. New for this year is table tennis, tai chi and yoga which were activities initiated by students and warmly welcomed, proving to be very popular. This is a regular commitment for the students requiring maturity, responsibility and good communication. The patients get the opportunity to meet students from around the world and sometimes to learn something new. Both patients and students enjoy getting to know each other, learn from each other and share some laughs.
In addition to their regular responsibilities students have also been introduced to the premise of cognitive therapy which is the basic ethos through which the therapists at Haugland practice. This is enlightening and incredibly positive as a working method. The individual activities, the social interaction and the leadership responsibility means a lot is expected from the students but this experience also means they have a great deal to learn from.
World Today is a service focusing on global events. We work actively to involve and inform people, aiming to increase our own and their knowledge and understanding of the world. We do this by making weekly presentations on pressing and topical issues. These presentations are comprised by a formal and informative part followed up by an interactive debate about the questions and points raised. Guest speakers and organizations are invited to come and advocate their opinions and spread knowledge, thereby fulfilling the aim of raising cultural awareness and enable understanding.
This year we have done World Todays about FARC, the US presidential elections, the situation in Kenya shortly after the elections and several other topics. We have been visited by Rabab Amidane, a Saharawi living in the Western Saharan territories occupied by Morocco. She gave a personal story about the current events and treatment of Saharawi citizens, emphasizing the lack of clear intervention and condemnation by the UN.
Another highlight was the visit by Rabia Kadeer, the 2004 Rafto prize laureate, who told the story of her life, focusing on the Chinese authorities’ treatment of the Uyghurs, an ethnic minority living in the Xinjiang province. Her presentation was preceded and succeeded by presentations on and the growth and expansion of Chinese influence and the events in Tibet, respectively.
In addition to these informative presentations we have also done highly controversial topics, like the Muhammad cartoons and a discussion about gender roles.
The spring term of 2008 has been very interesting and challenging for DROP. We continue to raise money for Raselas Diversity School in Ethiopia, to enable its existence. During this term, we have had meetings once a week, taking turns in having a general meeting and committee meetings. The fundraising events during this term have been various, including cafés in Flekke shop, John’s Burgers and a souvenir sale for host families during the Las Americas day as well as big bazaar in Dale in collaboration with Fjaler Ungdomskule. This bazaar was very successful for DROP, over 10000 NOK were raised. Any ideas how to raise money for DROP are more than welcome!
Another important event was in March, when Malin Hammarbäck, a student member, and Peter Wilson, a teacher and Chair of DROP, visited Ethiopia. They spent time at Raselas School interviewing pupils and teachers, including the Director of the School, and also filmed the school, some of the children and a school performance. Some of this film will be used in DROP’s official website for publicity. Visits were also made to other schools, such as Sandford International School and the Norwegian Community School, to gather information on possible collaborations and to see how successful small schools were being run. A visit was also made to the Swedish Embassy and to Eldan School In Jima, another possible partner and a school to which volunteers have been sent through eh RCNUWC Volunteer Programme. The 12 day visit was busy and hectic but should prove very useful in assisting DROP to meet its current fund raising goals with regard to Raselas.
Currently the first-year members have taken over DROP and our main goal is to fundraise 40 000 USD in order for Raselas School to buy its own land. The offer of this land was made after the visit to Raselas School the offer states that the price for 40 00 square metres of land is 1 USD per one square metre. This goal needs to be raised by July 2008, so any contributions towards it are needed and very much appreciated!
For more information, you can visit our websites:
http://drop.org.googlepages.com/home
http://www.droporg.no/
DROP wishes to thanks all those who contributed during this past term and year and would like to remind: Do Remember Other People!
So far the kayak EAC has completed five out of the six sessions that we had planned. We have had some nice trips and lots of fun. Swimming in the fjord in April was not a great pleasure for all as the water probably wasn’t more than 5ºc, and that is cold even with wet suits. But everyone survived and learned how to rescue their buddies in case of a capsize. I have seen a lot of improvement in the skills of the students. Some have fine tuned their techniques, and gained some experience and further knowledge about traveling by kayak and the safety issues connected with this kind of travel. Others have gone from not being able to maneuver a kayak at all, to now being in control of the kayak and being confident on the water. One more session remains, where the students will have the opportunity to prove them selves as responsible persons, who are confident with the use of techniques and equipment and can qualify to go out on their own in the kayaks.
SAFUGE had for this term many goals such as organizing a math competition in Sierra Leone and helping to fund a vocational boarding school for disabled youth in Freetown. At the end of the term, those goals are reached with even extra-projects and achievements due to an active dedication of members and support from the community.
To improve and reinforce Safuge as a non-governmental and non-commercial charity group, we decided to make it more professional so that everyone can contribute even away from the college in the future.
1. Safuge as an official charity organisation:
We made a constitution to make Safuge an official charity group with a bank account (so that you people can directly participate!). This is still in process though and we hope that it will be done by next term.
2. www.safuge.org:
We created this new web-site in order to create further awareness amongst people and to make broader the public: saving the future generation relays upon all of us! The web site is still under construction now but we already invite you to consult it in an early future.
3. The actions of Safuge during this term:
Clothing store sale: this was the second and last sale of the academic year 2007-2008. It was very fruitful : Safuge earned 2000 NOK.
Safuge offers service to community: this concept was launched in the community to create awareness about what Safuge is doing for Sierra Leone and hopefully to incite them to participate actively by offering the group some sort of “jobs”.
Examples of those are:
All those were very interesting: we had a wonderful team work with enthusiastic and dedicated members and that leads us to having great fun and new experiences (some of us have never been painting before nor going to a farm!)
4. Action in Sierra Leone for this summer:
This year, we gathered in total around 9000Kr, Prince (our current student from Sierra Leone) will bring this money to provide the following materials to school :
5. Project for next year:
After 6 years of good work in Sierra Leone: the school that Safuge helped to survive 6 years ago is now a very big an independent school.
Our project this year was in a different school that is going to be provided the necessary help.
In the idea of sharing opportunities, members have decided to broaden the field of Safuge: it will branch out to different countries in Africa and focus in a two years project for each. That will give other poor African countries the chance to receive help from Aafuge through any student members proposing good, worthy and concrete projects. As Safuge does not pursue too big and utopian projects it will even let the possibility to help two countries at the time if we have the necesary resources.
For the two coming years, members have been presenting different projects and the following has been elected by unanimity: Safuge will focus on a primary school in Madagascar located in a rural area of the capital called Ambatomasina. This school is often victim of tropical cyclones which destroys the already few materials they possess. Motivation of education is disappearing in this village where everyone except the two teachers at the school are farmer and coal producer. It is predicted that illiteracy is going to be total in this area with high potential in resources: so we already call you from now in this project to Save the Future Generation of Madagascar!
Hope that next year will be as fruitful as or better than this year.
Big thanks to everyone who helped: all the members, Upange, the staff supporting us mentioned above and others!
The dance activity is run by students for students to develop skills in contemporary and modern dance, to train fitness and flexibility and (sometimes) to perform. This year the dedicated leaders, Elisabeth and Alexandra, have been inspiring and demanding of their students, stretching everyone’s skills and developing grace, coordination and strength through regular exercises. They have also choreographed some demanding and daring pieces for various college occasions such as a performance about HIV, the Can-Can for the ‘European’ Show, and ‘Cell Block Tango’ from the musical ‘Chicago’ for the ‘Las Americas’ Show. The performances demonstrated a high level of professionalism and a genuine sense of group spirit and passion for what they do.
All students in the activity are encouraged to develop and progress and to try new things. The respect for each other in the group has clearly developed through the shared pain of one more sit up and the communal elation of a great performance. The regular commitment of everyone involved and the genuinely shared goal has made this an especially strong.
The first year student teachers taking over have some well established dancing shoes to step into but they have immediately begun to work on something for the second year parents show showing continued energy and joy for dancing.
