Global Issues Club

Welcome back everyone, or just plain welcome,

This year, me being in high school and Nabila in Middle, will give us good coverage of what is going on in at both places. So from now, whenever I post about updates, it will be, mostly, for high school. 

Bearing that in mind, I’m excited to see how many people will attend the meeting on Wednesday the 3rd. We only have an hour to give a lot of information regarding the club. This is year is going to be busy as we as a school don’t have much time to prepare for the coming conference.  Though it is in March, which will come fast, we as a school need to get a lot of work done. 

Hope we all have a great year as we 

“BE THE CHANGE!”

- Leila

I think it was yesterday that Mr.J sent this email to over 100 people. All to people in the global Issues network. More details will come later as we get closer to these dates. Here is the email.

Greetings from ASD EduCare in Doha,

It’s time to mark your calendars for next year! Three events in the 2008/2009 school year that will move us all towards education for a sustainable future.

1) Fall Leadership Conference 

   October 23rd-26th, Amman Jordan

   EduCare Workshop

2) NESA Winter Training Institute

   January 30th-31st, Doha Qatar

   A strand dedicated to environmental and global issues in the curriculum – EduCare!

   Registration soon on the NESA website 

   Special guest facilitator Dave Wilton from“ Facing the Future”  

   Learn about them, view the video 

 3) EduCare Symposium / Global Issues Conference

                       “Be The Change”

                        March 12th-14th

   For teachers (all levels) and students (8-12)

    Each school will be limited to 12 students

    Limited number of spaces for students

    Spaces will be held by payment and registration form

    Inspirational guest speakers, student lead workshops, action plan writing and more

    Website coming in August 2008

”Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.” Margaret Mead

Have a wonderful summer break!

EduCare Doha

I guess we at ASD are more excited about the third event. Let’s talk about it.

- Leila

Well as we talked about how we were going too make change we decided to see if we could compost at our school.

Here is a place to start conversations and to share information on the 2 BIG questions that we first want to answer before we get started.

• What is composting? What do you need?
• Can we get the materials here in Doha?

Dump you info here and let’s see if our plan for a sustainable future will work or not.

- Leila

Here is The Story of Stuff that we watched in class. Watch it, talk about it, and leave a few comments:

Here is a place to raise any ideas for conference preparation. Use the comments section to raise and answer questions. Have your discussions here…

Here is a great article from the NY Times about the role of farmers trying to raise food in a more sustainable way and the obstacles in their way. Great prompt for our conference quote:

“It is people who do development, not governments, and therefore sustainable development is a local activity. All people, however poor, have some ability, however constrained, of changing what they do, in small ways.”

After reading the article think about these questions:

• How much power do these farmers have?
• How local are their efforts?
• Is it working?
• What is the role of the federal government?

Read this small blurb:

Consumers who would like to be able to buy local fruits and vegetables not just at farmers’ markets, but also in the produce aisle of their supermarket, will be dismayed to learn that the federal government works deliberately and forcefully to prevent the local food movement from expanding…

Read the whole thing here and leave comments so we can get ready for our conference…