UWCSEA Dunia December 2021

December 2021

CELEBRATING 50 YEARS IN SINGAPORE

LONG-TERM LEARNING IN SUSTAINABILITY

BUILDING CAPACITY FOR PEACE

Page 14

Page 4

Page 10

I am convinced that whatever the future of education looks like, that UWC will play a very important part in shaping it.”

Faith Abiodun, Executive Director of UWC International speaking at the Kishore Mahbubani Speaker Series Reimagining Learning event: Celebrating the UWC mission on 13 December 2021. Read more on page 15.

December 2021

02 50 YEARS UNITED Carma Elliot CMG OBE, College President

03 HAPPY GOLDEN JUBILEE

A message from Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong

04 ENGAGING WITH COMPLEXITY A short history of sustainable development learning

06 THRIVING THROUGH SHARED PURPOSE

Interview with Nick Alchin, Head of East

08 ARTS SHOWCASE 2021

16 UWCSEA TIMELINE

Creativity continues across the College

Our journey 1971–2021

10 BUILDING CAPACITY FROM POSITIVE PEACE Extracted from White Paper 1

12 NURTURING STUDENT AGENCY Blended learning = best of both worlds

14 CELEBRATING 50 YEARS IN SINGAPORE There is more in us

18

PLACE-BASED SUSTAINABILITY LEARNING Extracted from White Paper 2

20 COMMUNITY IN BLOOM NParks awards East Campus Platinum (with Diamond)

21 CREATING CAPACITY FOR PEACEBUILDING Launching the UWCSEA IfP Toolkit

22 SEE! SEE! OECD report on Beyond Academic Learning

24

MEET THE MIDDLE SCHOOL PRINCIPAL Welcoming Gretchen DePoint

25 INSPIRATION FOR TRANSFORMATION Challenging student artists

26 WRITE FOR RIGHTS An opportunity for advocacy

28

SUPPORTING INCLUSIVE CLASSROOMS There is more than one way to be a UWCSEA family

30 ALUMNI VALUES IN ACTION AWARDS Taking the mission to the world

32 TELLING OUR STORY 50th anniversary book celebrates UWCSEA in Singapore

COVER IMAGES Front: East Campus Giving Day Back: Straits Times 15 December

Dunia is published two times a year by UWC South East Asia. Reproduction in any manner in English or any other language is prohibited without written consent. Please send feedback to dunia@uwcsea.edu.sg.

Read. Publish. Share. Subscribe.

Visit the newsroom of UWCSEA: perspectives.uwcsea.edu.sg

Editors: Sinéad Collins, Renée Gallant, Jason Gan and Kate Woodford Photography: Janrius Rogers, Joseph Tan and members of the UWCSEA community Design: Selina Low UWCSEA Dover is registered by the Committee for Private Education (CPE), part of SkillsFuture Singapore (SSG) CPE Registration No. 197000825H | CPE Registration Period 18 July 2017–17 July 2023 | Charity Registration No. 00142 UWCSEA East is registered by the Committee for Private Education (CPE), part of SkillsFuture Singapore (SSG) CPE Registration No. 200801795N | CPE Registration Period 10 March 2017–9 March 2023 | Charity Registration No. 002104 Printed on 100% recycled paper with environmentally friendly inks | MCI (P) 095/02/2020 | MKT-2122

OPINION

50 Years United

By Carma Elliot CMG OBE, College President This term has been a wonderful start to the celebration of our 50 year history in Singapore, and as I reflect on the collective activity that has taken place alongside all of the ‘business as usual’—the learning, the teaching, the operations and the care—I am grateful to be a part of such a wholeheartedly committed community.

There have been so many opportunities for us to be ‘together in purpose’ this term. At the Alumni Reunion in August, we kicked off our 50th celebrations in earnest and gathered together, virtually, some 700 alumni from across the globe.

While rekindling connections with former classmates and teachers, our alumni were also keen to explore what the College is today, and to understand how they can give back by continuing to live the mission in their lives beyond the College. The UWCSEA Alumni Values in Action Awards were launched that weekend, and the awardees announced during Founders Week at the book-end alumni event, our Holiday Reunion. It was humbling to see the ways in which our 19 awardees are making a difference in their communities, supporting inclusion, peace, sustainability and community wellbeing.

Activity around the theme of peace gathered pace in September, with the launch of our first White Paper Educating for Peace: UWCSEA’s Mission for Future Peacebuilders. UWC Day, on 21 September, was celebrated across both campuses by students and staff. That evening, I was honoured to host series namesake Kishore Mahbubani on the East Campus for a conversation examining perspectives on peace in front of a small audience of students and staff, and a much wider online audience. The messages of peace and the importance of the role of youth in the process of peacebuilding are continuing to spread, as the video recording of that discussion has continued to gather audiences in the intervening months.

While we will have more to share on this topic later this year, 2 | Dunia December 2021

we were also pleased to announce UWCSEA’s partnership with National University of Singapore’s (NUS) Asian Peace Programme (APP) at the event.

In a fitting culmination of our theme of Peace, the UWCSEA Initiative for Peace Toolkit was then launched at the end of September, and we welcomed alumni students and staff in an online event which served to highlight the importance of this programme, and the impact that initiatives such as IfP can have on the lives of young people and their communities. We have funded an experienced IfP facilitator to take care of the nascent programme, which we hope will grow to become a global network of IfP events, each having profound and long lasting personal impact on participants.

And then to the culminating event of this term, Founders Week. It began on Monday, 13 December with another inspiring Kishore Mahbubani Speaker Series event—a conversation with Faith Abiodun, the incoming Executive Director of UWC International for which I was joined by two of our High School students, Ruth and Anthony. Faith was inspirational on so many topics and really connected with our students. He shared that for him “UWC is possibility—plus agency” and that he hopes students will both see what can happen, and know that they can make it happen. It was an inspiring glimpse of the future of our global movement, and of the discussions that will take place in the UWCSEA Forum Learning to Shape the Future, which will take place in late April. We were so pleased to welcome so many in the UWC global community to the event, which was Faith’s first public appearance in his new role.

On Tuesday afternoon we began our first ever Giving Day with a splash when 50 Dover staff jumped into the pool to kick off the 30 hours of giving! I enjoyed baking 1,500 cookies with parent volunteers on both campuses, and had the joy of handing them out on our birthday, joined by scholars, students and members of the leadership team. The whole

College community came together to support scholarships and there were multiple staff and student challenges across the College. The generosity of our community was overwhelming with more than $450,000 raised by 735 donors in support of UWC scholarships. Our sincerest thanks to everyone who was able to support this special day, which will fund a number of scholars to experience a UWC education, including a young woman from Afghanistan.

Wednesday then marked 50 years to the day since former Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew opened the College on Dover Road. We were fortunate to receive a congratulatory video message from current Prime Minister Lee himself, which you can read alongside my own, or view the video on our 50th anniversary website. It is a remarkable honour to have a message acknowledging the special history UWCSEA has with Singapore, and of the value that is placed on our contribution, as a school and as a community. We hope to remain closely connected with Singapore; we know that we will continue to be inspired by our host country for the next 50 years.

And then we launched our highly anticipated 50th anniversary coffee table book, 50 Years United: The Story of UWCSEA in Singapore, with service and other Singapore partners and friends joining us in the Dover Campus Library.

The book is a wonderful collection of stories and memories in recognition of UWC’s intimate connection to Singapore’s story. I am grateful for the care that went into creating such a thoughtful record of our story, our achievements and our inspiration.

When our College opened in 1971, we effectively turned one school in Wales into a global movement, now 18 schools strong, a global community united by our common mission and a vision for inclusion and equity. How wonderful to celebrate together in such rich and meaningful ways.

A birthday message from Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong 15 December 2021 My warmest congratulations to UWC for 50 successful years in Singapore. Fifty years ago UWC was set up as one of the first international schools in Singapore educating the children of expatriates posted here. Since then UWC in Singapore has grown into an established and trusted educator. It has 5,600 students from over 100 nationalities and successful alumni all over the world. UWC’s success is intertwined with Singapore’s development and progress.

Throughout this journey the College has made valuable contributions to the wider community especially through your vibrant service programmes.

These last two years have been very difficult for everyone because of the COVID-19 pandemic. In particular, it’s been tough on the international community here. You have had to comply with strict travel restrictions. Some families have endured long periods of separation from members abroad. The economic uncertainties have also heightened local-foreigner anxieties in our society which you may have personally encountered. I would therefore like to thank the international community here for standing shoulder-toshoulder with Singaporeans through these difficult days.

Thank you for contributing to the economy and society and for being part of the extended Singapore family. We welcome you and value your contributions. We hope you will integrate well into our society and wish you and your family a productive and happy stay here. Singapore will always be an international hub, open and welcoming to ideas and talent and we thank UWC for helping to make Singapore a good place for expatriates to live and work.

I look forward to the College continuing to play a valuable role in Singapore for the next 50 years and beyond. Happy Golden Jubilee.

December 2021 Dunia | 3

FEATURE

Engaging with complexity

A short history of long-term sustainable development learning Adapted from UWCSEA White Paper 2: UWCSEA CHANGEMAKERS: Placing sustainable futures at the heart of a school Although always an implicit part of the school’s approach to education, the concept of sustainability as a goal was named in the UWC mission around twenty years ago, as the science and understanding of the extent of the world’s environmental challenges grew and as the economic consequences of rising inequality became apparent. These dual challenges both threatened the UWC movement’s ultimate goal of promoting peace through the education of young people who are inspired and equipped to take on the responsibility of building healthy societies. Over subsequent years, the case to incorporate sustainability into the education at the College as a more explicit aim has become even more compelling.

In 2005, UWCSEA helped drive the international UWC movement to adopt sustainability as one of its twin goals.

The school itself adopted sustainable development as a key part of its operations in 2007, at the same time developing its first College Environment Policy to drive its integration across the school.

However, in the decade before this, the College had already made a start, by designing an integrated Humanities course called Grade 6 Global Concerns. At the time the College was a secondary-only school, and this introduction to History and Geography set out to explicitly link learning in key concepts for each discipline with a deepening of students’ understanding of the development challenges facing communities throughout Asia.

Ellie Alchin, now Director of Teaching and Learning at UWCSEA Dover, taught the Grade 6 Global Concerns course 4 | Dunia December 2021

in 1995, shortly after it was developed by a team of teachers who had also been instrumental in establishing the Global Concerns service programme. Alchin says the course was conceived as a way for incoming first-year UWCSEA students to become more informed about the issues facing the Global Concerns service partners that they would be engaging with throughout their time at the school. “If students were supporting Jakarta Street Kids GC, for example, the course was intended to help them to be more effective, because they were­— while still learning important concepts of history and geography—able to understand some of the interrelated issues facing communities linked to the GC partner—poverty, inadequate health care, housing in slums—and be able to take more informed action later on.”

The development and subsequent evolution of the course into the Middle School ‘EngHum’ (integrated English and Humanities) programme which is still very much alive today is a hallmark of the College’s pioneering approach to curriculum development. This early adoption of concept-led, place-based and mission-aligned learning proved to be foundational for the College’s future; the transdisciplinary, holistic course design was an early model which informed the multi-year curriculum articulation project, which in turn led to the adoption of a concept-based model for teaching and learning.

Sustainable development is also core to the IB Diploma, which UWCSEA introduced in 1977 as part of becoming a full member of the UWC movement. While courses across the Diploma explore topics linked to sustainable development, the transdisciplinary Group 3 and 4 course Environmental Systems and Societies (ESS) is an exemplary model for learning in this area. The ESS course, currently available at Standard Level (SL), explores concepts such as applied

Photo by Janrius Rogers

systems thinking within Environmental Science. Students are challenged to understand how each part of an ecosystem interacts with and impacts other parts, as well as the entire system. This provides a framework to understand the ethical and socio-political aspects of societal issues, evaluate and measure their impact on people and the environment, and grow students’ understanding of ecological footprints and understanding of important critical thinking tools such as systems thinking.

In 1999, UWCSEA was at the forefront of the development of this increasingly popular IB course. High School teachers Ellie Alchin (who was teaching a school based transdisciplinary course called IB Science, Technology and Society) and Gary Seston (who was teaching an IB course called Environmental Systems) to an IB workshop to write, and then pilot, what would be adopted as the curriculum for the new IB ESS subject. Subsequent growth in the popularity of this subject, originally called Ecosystems and Societies, reflects the increasing importance of these concepts and skills for students who will join the workforce of the future. Alchin, who served as the IB Deputy Chief Examiner for the ESS SL course for a decade, was most recently part of the global team who completed the development of the HL ESS course, which will be piloted by the IB in a number of schools from August 2022.

The College’s continued focus on transdisciplinary curriculum development has contributed to the successful integration of sustainability topics throughout the UWCSEA learning programme from Kindergarten to Grade 12. Following years of development to create a concept-based K-12 written curriculum for four of the five elements of the UWCSEA learning programme—academics, service, outdoor education

and personal and social education—Sustainable Development was recently named as one of the five mission competencies in the UWCSEA Guiding Statements.

UWCSEA’s Guiding Statements defines the Sustainable Development mission competency as being demonstrated by an individual ‘engaging with complexity, understanding multiple futures, taking the role of steward and developing sustainable solutions within environmental, social, economic and political systems.’ The development of the exciting new Grade 9 and 10 UWCSEA courses over the coming years, which have progress towards the mission competencies at the heart of their intended learning outcomes, are further examples of how the College’s long-term approach to curriculum development continues to evolve in line with the needs of students, by encompassing sustainability initiatives and student activism as part of the learning.

Most recently, the College has adopted a definition of sustainable development derived from the 1991 report Caring for the Earth, subsequently refined by the Global Footprint Network: “Wellbeing for all, within the means of nature.”

This definition is measurable and achievable, both of which are important for a school whose students are in the first stage of their lifelong learning journey, and encapsulates the approach UWCSEA takes to the challenge, which is to offer a way forward and to consider how to make sustainable choices when weighing up decisions across all areas of education and throughout life.

Download White Paper 2: UWCSEA CHANGEMAKERS: Placing sustainable futures at the heart of a school December 2021 Dunia | 5

INTERVIEW

Thriving through shared purpose Nick Alchin took up the role as Head of UWCSEA East in January 2021. One year into his appointment, the East Campus community will be familiar with his name—hundreds of emails have been sent in his name as we navigate the pandemic—but many will not yet have had a chance to meet the passionate educator.

His commitment to UWCSEA and the UWC mission have fueled 12 months of thoughtful leadership focused on encouraging the development of both students and staff as agents of positive change in the world. He is a believer in the power of shared purpose and hope that comes from being a part of the UWCSEA community with its collective responsibility to our shared mission.

Dunia asked him to share a little more: Dunia: What would you describe as the challenge of leadership? How does this influence you in your role as Head of Campus?

Nick: There’s the need to hold and wrestle with valid opposing ideas and behaviours—while at the same time sticking to our mission and values. It’s a bit of a paradox as it means attempting to find space and occasion to be humble and strong, decisive and open, confident and vulnerable, tough and compassionate, detached and sensitive, symbolic and substantive. It means being absolutely fair, while also being sensitive to particular circumstances.

And so on. Leadership is difficult, and it should not be presented as being easy.

We can always do better, and frankly, this complexity is why we sometimes get it wrong. But we keep trying!

6 | Dunia December 2021

I tend not to think about myself as an individual leader, and find it easier to think about how I can contribute to and shape the leadership of the College. We need all the qualities, and sometimes we have to recognise that no individual can carry them all at once—so the team is really the fundamental unit of leadership. My focus is on trying to create tighter networks of connections, internally and externally. This takes time, and requires enormous trust and resilience and belief—but it’s worthwhile and we’ll end up more robust and resilient as a result.

What are some of the long term innovations that you are most excited about being a part of bringing into life at UWCSEA? There are many changes underway.

Some structural ones are plain to see, some cultural ones are far less visible—but the most recent significant change that I can point to is perhaps the way the College is approaching the extension of our High School programme and the new Grade 9 and 10 programme, which continues the concept–based interdisciplinary approach of our K–8 programme.

At East, and across the College, we’ve collectively created an environment in which thinking, debate and evolution is encouraged, and that has helped us to create a community focused on improving our education for peace and sustainability. And this will—as we have already seen—continue to produce agents of change in the world who will bring our mission, our shared purpose, to life in ways we haven’t even imagined yet.

I am also looking forward to continuing the progress we have made on inclusion and wellbeing—much of this work is in its infancy at the moment but from the foundations we are building, or probably better phrased as reconstructing, I am hopeful that we will achieve a real difference in the life of our community and which we will be able to share more broadly as educators, and with the wider world through the actions of our students.

What brought you into education?

As with so many things, there was a lot of serendipity. As a teenager, I signed up to work in America at a summer camp for children with special needs, and returned for many summers. I enjoyed it, and was good at it and so when I was later looking for what might allow me to pursue the things I love, I was drawn back to that experience of working with young people and bringing out the best in them. So after short stints as a computer programmer and as an actuary, I returned to university to train as a teacher. And I have never wanted to do anything else.

You’re what we affectionately call a member of the ‘boomerang club’— you were at Dover Campus and then left for a period before returning to help establish the East Campus High School in 2011. What compelled you to return, and to stay on and lead the school?

Ellie, my wife and I were lucky enough to join Dover as our first international school in 1996. An odd place to spend a honeymoon, but there you go. I taught Maths, Computing and Theory of Knowledge (TOK). Arriving more by

good fortune than by design (this was in the days before schools had websites, virtual tours or online interviews) we had applied to jobs advertised in a newspaper, in search of an adventure.

The six years we spent in Singapore were a formative experience for both of us. Ellie is now Director of Teaching and Learning at Dover and we count ourselves blessed to have started our international teaching careers there.

the opportunities I’ve had to contribute to the teaching and learning of critical thinking. The Clothmaker Schoolteacher Fellowship at New Hall in the University of Cambridge was fascinating, reviewing of programmes for Critical Thinking in schools. I was also pretty proud of being accepted to lecture in Critical Thinking at Nanyang Technological University and California State University during my first stint in Singapore.

Following Dover, I spent a few years at the International School of Geneva, then seven years at Sevenoaks School in the UK as Head of Maths and Director of IB. From there, we moved to Kenya and taught at the Aga Khan Academy in Mombasa where I was Dean of Studies.

But as I get older, honestly the moments are more about individual students and colleagues, and the times when I feel I’ve been able to make a difference to them. Sometimes you know because they tell you; more often than not you just watch them grow, respond, adapt and change and you just think, “I was a part of that in some positive way.” That’s a good feeling. And sometimes you just don’t know, but you take it on faith. I read somewhere this idea that ‘the meaning of life is to plant trees under whose shade you will never sit.” I love that I think it’s what schools do. I’m still in touch with some of the kids from those summer camps, for example. They are now adults with their own families—and that sort of thing is what keeps me going.

I came back to UWCSEA to the East Campus because despite being at other fine schools, I didn’t see anywhere with equally powerful aspirations and capacities to implement. And that remains my reason for being here still. All young people have incredible potential and this school nurtures that in a very inspirational and—to my mind—quite unique way. This is made possible by the staff, who are unparalleled. They are here for the same reasons as I am; we share the same purpose and hope in a very powerful mixture. It’s a cliche I know, but it is genuinely humbling to be part of this community.

Quite literally, you ‘wrote the book’ for IB Theory of Knowledge and have been deeply connected to the IB organisation for decades, including serving as Chief Assessor globally for TOK and a stint as Vice Chair of the IB Examining Board. That’s quite a lot to be proud of. We’re interested to know which professional achievements have meant the most to you as an educator?

You know, there was a time that I would have talked about some of the things I’ve been involved in, and been really proud of some of them. Aside from the work with the IB—which you’ve been fairly thorough in researching!—I would perhaps have named some of

I guess having my own kids now nearly finished school also makes me see it in a whole different way. I didn’t think I ever would have put it this way without this question but I guess I feel quite parental about work now in a way that I wouldn’t have done a few years ago— with all the opportunities and problems that parenting brings, which are many and profound, as most readers here will know.

You’re a prolific blogger, how do you find the time?

Well, I don’t know about prolific—it’s one post each week as a way of sharing ideas about interrelated aspects of education, culture and schooling. Or perhaps not just sharing ideas, but also using the blog as a way to clarify my thoughts by pinning them down in written form. I like the discipline of it, if nothing else.

About Nick Skill you learned for the love of it Unicycling Skill you’ve not yet mastered but would like too One-armed press up Three pieces of creativity that inspire you Poem: Snow by Louis MacNeice Book: Look To Windward by Iain M Banks Book: Labyrinths by Jorge Luis Borges Of all your qualifications, which was the most satisfying to gain?

Further Maths A level. Loved it, unreservedly, from start to end.

When you eat at a Singapore hawker stall you choose...

Rojak You relax by…?

Running / gym / yoga / reading Language you wish you spoke Chinese Travel experience you’d repeat Touring Namibia with young kids.

Board game or card game?

Neither The superpower you’d most like to have To teleport, taking people and luggage with me

Visit Nick’s blog Education, Schools and Culture to explore more: December 2021 Dunia | 7

COMMUNITY NEWS

Grade 4 Celebration of Music

MS Rock Show

Artist-in Residence Shayne Phua in Junior School Art classes

ARTS SHOWCASE

UN Night

Grade 3 Knee Pots showcase display

DOVER CAMPUS

The Short Form High School Drama Showcase

Photos by Joseph Tan

Middle School Rock Show

High School Student-led Drama Production

Across the campuses, artistic pursuit and energy has continued to flourish throughout Term 1. From Primary School students engaging in music lessons and visual art workshops to the student energy and enthusiasm on display in the annual cultural showcases that are UN Night and Culturama, our students and staff have been engaged and enthusiastic participants in the arts across the academic and activity programme.

We’re hoping we will be able to invite parents to experience the arts programme on campus in Terms 2 and 3 and will continue to share our students’ successes online.

Unplugged

High School Drama Kathakali workshop

Photos by Janrius Rogers

CultuRama

EAST CAMPUS

FEATURE

Building capacity for positive peace Peace education is what we do and how we do it, not just what children learn.”

Ellie Alchin, Director of Teaching and Learning, UWCSEA Dover Excerpted from UWCSEA White Paper 1: EDUCATING FOR PEACE: UWCSEA’s mission for future peacebuilders Broader than a single subject, peace education at UWCSEA aims to instil a deep understanding of what peace is, the different ways peace can be achieved, and to embed peace throughout a wide range of learning opportunities.

“Peace education is what we do and how we do it, not just what children learn,“ explains Ellie Alchin, Director of Teaching and Learning at UWCSEA Dover. “Peacebuilding is not a standalone curriculum because it fits into so many different areas of the school. There are elements of peace education in the personal and social education curriculum, there are conceptual understandings relating to peace in the humanities curriculum. It’s explicitly taught in global citizenship and global politics, and in IB and (i)GCSE history. It’s also built into the service curriculum, and anywhere that students learn about sustainability.”

At UWCSEA, peacebuilding is something that is explicitly taught and considered to be critical to the foundations of a healthy community and society. It is an act of service, but it is also considered to be a core understanding and disposition that helps people achieve peace personally and in complex, real-world situations.

Defining peace The first fundamental aspect of determining how peace education might be built into learning starts with a definition.

This may seem a simple step, but peace can occur across many levels. There can be peace within yourself or in your family, peace within a community and, at its largest consideration, peace between countries.

skills, and knowledge to help them build the structures and relationships that can help support peace into the future.

Peace may also take many different forms in practice. Positive peace is when the attitudes, structures and institutions that underpin peace are in place, function well and a society is free of violence. Negative peace is “the absence of violence and the absence of fear and violence” according to the Institute for Economics and Peace, a non-profit think tank. However, in this state, while a society may be free from violence, its peace structures are still fragile and lack the necessary frameworks to support it into the future.

The programme is designed to link to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 16, to “promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels.”

This in turn can result in a peace deficit, where the peace a society has gained can’t be sustained in the future by its internal socio-economic development and the institutions and support networks needed to maintain peaceful societies1.

At UWCSEA, students examine all potential aspects of peace, but the focus is on giving students the understanding,

“There are lots of definitions of peace. And the most common idea is that peace is the absence of war, that idea of negative peace. But when we think about peace at UWCSEA, and when we talk about peace education, we’re really talking about positive peace,” says Alchin.

As a pillar of the school’s educational philosophy, it helps guide the teaching approach across the Primary, Middle and High Schools, and enables peacebuilding to be woven into many different subject areas in all grade levels. Peace is also one of the “Five Ps” that the United Nations uses to conceptualise sustainable development, and this definition therefore interlinks peace education with other important Mission Competencies, like Sustainable Development, and Interpersonal and Intercultural Understanding.

Reference [1] Positive Peace Report 2020: Analysing the Factors that Sustain Peace, The Institute for Economics and Peace, 2020 https://www.economicsandpeace.org/ wp-content/uploads/2021/04/PPR-2020web.pdf 10 | Dunia December 2021

Photo by Joseph Tan

UWCSEA rings of peacebuilding

From definition to practice The definition of peace has an important impact on the way that peacebuilding is incorporated into the curriculum. The programme begins with the definitions, and then explores three key layers—or rings—of building peace. These layers help shape the way that peace is taught from K1 to Grade 12.

•

Peaceb uild ing y c a m u c on • H an Righ iati ts c e • pr eness • r a w P f a

ERSONAL PE AC ERP T E IN AL PEA N O S C ER

•

al conflict ation ern • Int ships • Acc e p tion tan ela c •R dentity • I •

eing • S ellb el W

gents of change a as a nd

uth a dv Yo o ences • Cult u r a iffer la fd p eo

At UWCSEA, the inner ring begins with our youngest students in K1 and guides curriculum development and service and activities throughout a student’s life at school. As students’ develop, the focus moves outside their immediate circle and learning expands to in age-appropriate ways to connecting with others and the community, and concepts that support these. In the outer ring, peacebuilding is explored through understanding of historical conflicts, through global politics and global citizenship courses, and again through the activities and service programmes. Students who choose to focus on peacebuilding in High School can also participate in the Initiative for Peace (IFP), UWCSEA’s flagship peacebuilding education programme.

•

E

The first inner ring of peace is personal peace, which starts with the ideas of identity, including an understanding of who a student is, their cultural self and a sense of self awareness.

The middle ring is the concept of interpersonal peace. This relates to interpersonal relationships and the acceptance of differences, including an ability to appreciate different cultures, so that people know how to interact with each other and can understand each other’s different ideas of community peace. The third and outer ring is the concept of global peace, which includes international conflict, the role of youth as agents of change and advocacy, and peace building in the wider global sense, including how we build the systems and structures that lead to a more peaceful future.

AL PEACE GLOB

Modified from Crawford and Shelit (2012) for UNICEF

Learn more about peace education at UWCSEA explore our web pages on Educating for Peace and download the White Paper:

December 2021 Dunia | 11

OPINION

Nurturing student agency

How taking the best of digital and face-to-face learning can empower students and enhance learning

By Tim Lovatt, Head of Digital Learning, Dover Campus and Adrienne Michetti, Head of Digital Learning, East Campus Tim took his daughter to the Museum of Ice Cream last week.

It’s the offensively pink building on Dempsey Hill that offers, amongst other things, ice-cream tasting counters. There, she was faced with a seemingly impossible dilemma; Chocolate Chip, or Strawberry? For what seemed like an eternity, she dithered over the choice and, with much reluctance, chose strawberry. Tim smugly took his chocolate chip and they sat down on some offensively pink seats. Almost immediately, his daughter was reaching over, scooping out his chocolate chips and mixing them into her strawberry ice cream. Whilst mourning the loss of the chocolate, he was nevertheless impressed with her simple solution to get the best of both options.

Best of both Ice-cream based stories aside, why shouldn’t our students be able to access the best bits of every opportunity? When it comes to learning, we should be curating, nurturing, creating and delivering the very best educational experiences for our students, taking chocolate chips, strawberry and gula melaka, throwing in some mochi and making a supercharged experience that has all the best ingredients. And even better, if they don’t get on well with some of those, switch them with their own favourites.

In education, this process is called Blended Learning. At UWCSEA, we define blended learning as an approach which combines elements of online and face-to-face learning, which increases levels of student agency and ownership over the learning process. As stated in our UWCSEA learning principles, increased agency and ownership allow for higher quality and more relevant feedback, leading to more meaningful learning.

The term “blended learning” has been around for decades, but technology and the pandemic have accelerated the uptake, 12 | Dunia December 2021

relevance and understanding of blended learning, paving the way for a transformation in the way that schools could work. Here at UWCSEA, we are pushing these boundaries, augmenting our already outstanding teaching and learning practices with blended learning approaches and digital tools to create the very best learning experience for our students.

Blended Learning approaches also allow us to collect valuable evidence of learning which in turn helps to inform teaching and learning practices. Through ongoing and purposeful professional learning, innovation and collaboration, we are making this a reality and developing even more ways to embed our learning principles in classrooms and beyond.

Reimagine the learning process Walking through classrooms at UWCSEA, you would likely see students using a variety of media to access their learning; video, text, audio, interactive simulation, and the ability to choose the one that helps them learn most effectively.

You might see students choosing their own route to their learning destination, engaging with resources that they can pause, rewind and revisit in ways that are best suited to them. Instead of doing homework, you may find students completing pre-learning, so they come to the class equipped with knowledge and ready to challenge their understanding, debate their points of view on an issue or practice their skills.

Picture a lesson where students are investigating 3D printing.

Students can choose from curated resources to introduce them to the topic—a magazine article, a podcast or a video.

Using CAD software they can pick an assignment to design which tallies with their level of confidence in the tools and their personal interests (fashion, sports, engineering, etc). They then have access to a tutorial (which they can re-watch at any time) showing them how to print their design. Throughout this process, there are opportunities for collaboration, feedback, reflection and 1-1 teacher interaction, each enhanced by blended learning approaches.

Photo by Joseph Tan

Or, picture a Maths lesson where students are learning about surface area. To begin, students submit entry tickets to show what they have learned or practiced from a self-paced video from earlier in the week. Based on students’ responses, they might then have choices about what particular skill they need to practice or learn next. One group will measure models such as cubes and paper towel rolls, covering them in foil to test their calculations; another group uses a leveled, selfpaced online game to apply learning to different contexts; yet another group conferences with the teacher to re-work or reinforce the formula for the surface area of prisms, and one last group watches a tutorial—at their own pace—on how to calculate the surface area of cylinders.

These are just a few examples of what a blended UWCSEA experience is like. There are many other possibilities of what blended learning experiences might look like, and we are continuing to experiment and explore with those that best meet our students’ needs.

Follow passions Our students are fabulously different from each other. They will go on to thousands of different careers in hundreds of different industries, and part of our role as adults is to support them in the discovery of their passions. A teenager cannot be expected to know if they want to be a journalist or a patent attorney if they haven’t been able to dig deeper into the things they love doing. What is contained in school curricula is, by design, the trunk of a tree of knowledge that branches out almost infinitely into countless avenues of knowledge.

Blended learning at UWCSEA offers opportunities to scamper down some of these branches and experience the view, giving them choice and ownership over their learning path, pace and content.

Building on that analogy, the IGCSE Science curriculum requires the students to understand the fundamentals of the human heart and blood. Our blended approach gives students not only this foundational trunk of knowledge, but offers students the chance to choose some branches to explore.

Maybe a student is interested in sports and can access a deep-dive into the relationship between fitness and cardiac output. Their classmate may want to investigate the public health implications of fast-food advertising or analyse the correlation between cardiovascular disease and diet. Another student might want to look at white blood cells and find out more about how mRNA vaccines work, and perhaps work with a partner who wants to apply their knowledge to combat health misinformation. The possibilities, like the career paths that could emerge, are endless, and when combined with well curated resources can produce truly inspirational and powerful learning experiences.

What next?

This is only the beginning of the journey. Exploration and professional learning is ongoing for blended learning, both at UWCSEA and beyond. We will take the very best bits for our students, and take them in the direction that aligns with our mission and values, developing students’ UWCSEA mission competencies in a targeted and effective way.

This might be, for example; further blending of service and outdoor education experiences with the academic curriculum; elective micro-units which students can access in their own time according to their own interests; student leadership and content creation for courses; modules or experiences produced by our partners, GCs or wider community—or maybe something else entirely. But if one thing is certain, it’s that we’re not going to have to choose between strawberry and chocolate chip.

December 2021 Dunia | 13

COMMUNITY NEWS

Celebrating Centred on our mission and connected through our theme There is More in Us, our year-long celebration is focused on a series of community events involving students, staff, parents, alumni and our global community of partners. Kicking off with the Alumni Reunion in August 2021, we managed to pack much activity and discussion into Term 1 before we turned to Founders Week. Running 13–17 December, activities centred on celebrating our deep connections with Singapore, the place that made us.

In April 2022 we look forward to the UWCSEA Forum themed Learning to Shape the Future as the capstone event in our anniversary year. It is both an exciting year of celebration and an opportunity to recommit to our vision of what a better world can be.

LAUNCH ACTIVITIES

Campus Dressing

Alumni Reunion 20–22 August 14 | Dunia December 2021

years in Singapore FOUNDERS WEEK 13–17 DECEMBER We continued to Reimagine Learning in conversation with two special guests in an ongoing series of discussions aimed at bringing fresh perspectives and new thinking to our community in the lead up to the UWCSEA Forum.

Perspectives on Peace: a conversation with Kishore Mahbubani 21 September Series Patron Kishore Mahbubani joined College President Carma Elliot in a discussion on peace as a final event to mark the UWCSEA community celebration of UWC Day in Singapore. UWC Day is celebrated across the UWC movement annually on 21 September, in honour of the UN’s International Day of Peace.

UWCSEA was proud to announce a partnership with National University of Singapore’s (NUS), Asian Peace Programme (APP).

Celebrating the UWC mission: a conversation with Faith Abiodun 13 December In this special event, marking the start of UWCSEA’s 50th anniversary Founders Week, Faith Abiodun, incoming Executive Director of UWC International, joined UWCSEA High School students Ruth and Anthony and College President Carma Elliot in a wide-ranging discussion on the relevance and future of the UWC movement and mission.

Our global audience was part of an inspirational conversation that touched on the need for educational models to evolve and become accessible to, and celebratory of, students from a range of educational backgrounds. They also explored the importance of student agency and trust as opportunities for capacitybuilding.

Thank you Singapore 9–21 September Our College would not be the same place without having made its home in the unique and vibrant global hub that is Singapore. On 15 December we took a full page in the Straits Time to say Thank You Singapore. The back cover of this magazine reflects a version of this ad and the QR code will link you through to the outdoor campaign which ran in bus shelters around both campuses carrying messages of thanks to the community in which we live and learn.

Giving Day 14–15 December UWCSEA celebrated our first-ever Giving Day on the College’s 50th birthday with a series of challenges and activities across both campuses.

In just 30 hours, we were able to raise over SGD$450,000 from more than 730 donors to support the UWC Scholarship Programme so as to extend our mission to make education a force for a more peaceful and sustainable future.

We set a goal to raise enough funding to provide access to a UWC education for at least two scholars, including one female scholar from Afghanistan, and are thrilled that with the generous support from across the UWCSEA community, we will be able to now support these scholars with the gift of a UWC education!

Giving Day was not only a demonstration of generosity by parents, alumni, staff and friends of the College, it was also a testament to the collaborative spirit and sense of community that is a hallmark of being a part of the UWCSEA family.

Book Launch 16 December Our coffee table book was launched in an event in the Dover Main Library on 16 December—please see page 32 for a full report, and to read more about the message of congratulations and thanks that Singapore’s Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong extended to UWCSEA on the occasion of our Golden Jubilee.

December 2021 Dunia | 15

Singapore International School is opened by Prime Minister Mr Lee Kuan Yew as an associate member of the UWC movement, with the support of UWC President, Lord Mountbatten and the International Secondary School Study Committee.

The first United Nations evening celebrates the College’s multicultural community with food, national dress, music and dance. UN Night on Dover and CultuRama on East continue to be annual highlights of student performance and celebration.

By 1974 Marathon Day, which had begun in 1972 as a series of madcap events to raise funds for a number of service initiatives, was raising over $10k through a week of activities including spaghetti-eating contests, a 48 hour game of bridge–and a student remaining up a tree for 36 hours.

Singapore International School is renamed UWC South East Asia, becoming a full member of the UWC movement and triggering a number of developments, including preparing to welcome our first UWC scholars.

1971

1972

1974

1975

The first student expedition travelled to the Lamdon School in Leh, Ladakh, another step in cementing a relationship that now spans more than 30 years and reaches across both campuses.

Footprints replaces Mengembara as the student publication dedicated to College travel experiences.

Primarily focused on Project Week, these reflections provide a wonderful tribute to the power and potential of this unique UWCSEA experience.

The iconic “Air Con Pool” is drained bringing an end to kayaking and student antics. A tent was raised over the space in 1997 and the space was filled to create today’s plaza in 2015.

The Tent Plaza is a central gathering point on both campuses.

Middle School ‘EngHum’ (integrated English and Humanities) programme is launched in the College’s 25th anniversary year which was marked by a Global Concerns conference and UWC International meeting.

1991

1992

1994

1996

UWCSEA East opens its doors to welcome 400 students in our temporary campus in Ang Mo Kio, as construction of a state-of-the-art second campus in Tampines begins.

Mr Heng Swee Keat, then Minister for Education, officially opens East Campus in Tampines.

The newly constructed campus is re-awarded the Building and Construction Authority’s Green Mark Platinum award.

Our 500th scholar graduates from UWCSEA. Thanks to the generous support of the UWCSEA Foundation an increasing number of scholars have been welcomed into our community.

By 2024 over 1,000 scholars will have graduated from UWCSEA.

A five-year building and refurbishment programme on Dover Campus concludes with the opening of the new High School Block. Mirroring the transformation of Singapore, the campus has modernized while maintaining reminders of the past.

2011

2012

2016

2008

Our partnership with MINDS— Movement for the Intellectually Disabled of Singapore is established. Students make their first visit to Tampines Home, now mindsville@napiri.

In 1977 UWCSEA became the first school in Asia to offer the IB Diploma, introduced as part of becoming a full member of the UWC movement. A-Levels are discontinued in 1981.

A lavish production of The King and I delights audiences. UWCSEA’s strong tradition of performing and visual arts continues through our extensive arts programmes, which are delivered in our numerous performance and gallery spaces across both campuses.

Perhaps a catalyst for the development of our bespoke Outdoor Education curriculum, Beluntu, our United World Centre in Johore, is closed after 10 years. In addition to expedition experiences, many academic departments used the site for study projects and field trips.

1976

1977

1980

1984

The decision to become a K–12 school results in a period of construction, including the Primary School block, a new boarding house and the Roy Bennett Theatre.

OPUS is held for the first time at the Victoria Concert Hall. It later moved to the Esplanade, where Dover students and staff still perform in this annual concert.

The first Initiative for Peace (IfP) conference, Youth Connecting Youth to Create Peace, is held. Now a flagship programme at UWCSEA, IfP has inspired numerous alumni to pursue careers in peace and conflict resolution. The IfP Toolkit for youth groups and schools was launched in 2021.

Community support launched Project Aceh, a 10+ year commitment in the wake of the December 2004 tsunami which included the Tsunami Education Fund (TEF), a long-term financial support programme for tsunami yatim piatu (tsunami orphans) to encourage them to complete High School.

1997

1998

2002

2005

UWCSEA East achieves CIS/ WASC accreditation, following the successful accreditation of Dover Campus in 2012 and allowing both campuses to offer the UWCSEA High School Diploma in addition to the IB Diploma.

East Campus celebrates 10 years of educating for peace and a sustainable future.

Restrictions imposed due to COVID-19 transform life on campus. Social distancing, masks and several periods of home-based learning pose unprecedented challenges, particularly to our Boarding community.

UWCSEA celebrates 50 years of UWC in Singapore with a year-long programme of celebrations and impact events.

2017

2018

2020

2021

FEATURE

Photo by Joseph Tan

Place-based sustainability learning Adapted from White Paper 2: UWCSEA Changemakers: Placing sustainable futures at the heart of a school No school focused on sustainability would confine their lessons to the classroom, but at UWCSEA our entire campuses have been co-opted into providing students of all ages real-life learning opportunities linked to the UWC mission.

While many in our community will be aware of the Greenmark Platinum Super Low Energy accreditation which has been awarded to both campuses by Singapore’s Building and Construction Authority, and some will have adopted and perhaps even installed a solar panel or planted tree in support of our student-led initiatives, there has been quiet and extensive progress towards consolidating the unique educational opportunity that the facilities on both campuses provide for our students.

The next steps in creating a mission– aligned education based on the premise

18 | Dunia December 2021

that students can learn more effectively by immersing themselves in real-life experiences that are relevant to them is a collaborative project to provide deliberately planned opportunities for students to bring their classroom learning to life on campus. A key factor in taking this place-based approach to planning learning experiences is the switch in how the campus facilities are utilised; rather than simply providing a venue for learning, the buildings—and those who manage them—are reframed as direct contributors to the education of the students by providing relevant, real life examples.

Student agency and shared purpose Each campus holds myriad potential for place-based real-life application of classroom lessons: the way they are designed or remodeled, lit, cooled, landscaped, managed and cleaned— ensures that students are surrounded

by real-life examples of sustainability in action. Over the past decade, our students have been involved in the planning and development of the campuses, and now contribute ideas to improvements and refurbishments.

Further, there are programmes in place across many of the elements of our learning programme for students to contribute to the sustainable operation of the campuses.

At Dover, for example, the Solar for Dover student group designed a live dashboard to help monitor the solar fields on that campus, while the Solar for East team have made over 80 classroom presentations on environmental management to students of all ages. Both campuses also have a live solar lab, supporting hands-on environmental engineering and science lessons.

Place-based learning “immerses students in local heritage, cultures, landscapes, opportunities and experiences using these as a foundation for learning.”

Center for Place-Based Education at Antioch University, Boggs School Linking classrooms to campus Student involvement as part of their participation in the learning programme is a key to the success of numerous operational initiatives, from managing the compost systems, to helping the canteens become zero waste, to cultivating seedlings and maintaining gardens. It has been a conscious effort to build educational opportunities into as many aspects of the day-to-day operations on each campus as possible. This extensive network of real-life examples is now something that Ellie Alchin, Director of Teaching and Learning on Dover and Aman Singh Chauhan, Head of Facilities and Operations across both campuses, are working to extend by engaging the expertise of the Facilities and Operations teams who run the sustainable buildings in support of student learning in modules across the academic programme.

To this end, curriculum leaders have worked with the Facilities team to build nine sustainability case studies into the academic curriculum, extending the links already established in the Service curriculum. These modules are based on a model of place-based learning, a powerful approach that gives students hands-on experience and real-life examples by combining the on-campus environment with subject-matter expertise shared by the staff responsible for operating the facilities.

Tim Lovatt, in his role as Instructional Coach and Teacher of High School Physics on Dover Campus, was one of a team planning and conducting workshops in “how teachers think” for colleagues in the Facilities and Operations team. The workshops are designed to equip staff with tools and strategies to enable them to create a

greater impact—both within their teams and in their interactions with students during the case study programme. "It’s been so awesome to work with such a talented and dedicated group of people.

I am not aware of many other schools with non-teaching staff who are so eager to enhance their interactions with students," said Lovatt. "In particular it’s been such a pleasure to develop and run these workshops with a team who are so enthusiastically taking up the challenge and opportunity of sharing their technical expertise with our students."

Taking collective action, individually Sustainability learning doesn’t end at the gates of the school, however, and staff are often working together with engaged students to connect with suppliers to help them understand their impact and improve their commitment to sustainability, and hence that of the school. This includes the stationery suppliers who have moved to forestfriendly paper, food wholesalers who have stopped using unsustainable palm oil in products they supply through the Sodexo-run canteen, removal of single use plastic water bottles, canteen initiatives such as composting, food waste minimisation and recycling and vegetarian Wednesdays, uniform manufacturers who now source more environmentally friendly fabrics, and the transport company, who now wait until all students are boarded and ready to leave before they start the engines.

This ‘whole of school’ approach defines the way UWCSEA describes developing a mission competency, which is that a student’s education is a way for individual members of the community to develop approaches to living and skills that can be extended and built on throughout their lives.

Our sustainable building journey The Dover Campus, parts of which date back to the 1960s, was not originally designed with sustainability top of mind. However, by the time a multi-year campus rejuvenation, spanning 2009–2016 began, sustainability had become a guiding principle in decision making at the College. The long-running curriculum articulation project embedded the idea of sustainable development into the learning programme; in parallel, the College embraced the challenge of embedding sustainable practices into all facets of operations—whether designing and constructing the new East Campus or retro-fitting the existing Dover site, the efforts were extensive.

In recognition of UWCSEA’s leadership in designing, retrofitting and managing environmentally sustainable campuses, both campuses were awarded Green Mark Platinum Super Low Energy certification in 2020. Dover Campus received the award for the entire site, rather than for an individual building—a remarkable achievement and testament to the College’s commitment to put the mission into practice in operations as well as education. East Campus is one of few buildings in Singapore that has been continuously re-awarded Green Mark Platinum across the entire building life cycle, from planning and design, through construction and opening, to the energy efficient operation and maintenance of the campus.

To read more about UWCSEA’s approach to Educating for Sustainable Development please visit the website and download the White Paper:

December 2021 Dunia | 19

COMMUNITY NEWS

East Campus

Rainforest Restoration Project and Rooftop Nursery Classroom

Gardens by the Bus Bay

Infant School Rooftop Sensory Garden

Rain Garden

Composting Centre

A community in bloom

East Campus continues to reap rewards Building the ecological and environmental literacy in our future global citizens is a critical element to education.”

Claire Psillides, Head of Environmental Sustainability, East Campus At UWCSEA, education does not just happen within the classroom. Our Service programme uses the green spaces on campus, and students are offered a range of activities which provide avenues for them to learn about many aspects of Singapore’s natural environment.

For the fourth time, the East Campus has been awarded by Singapore’s NParks in their annual Community in Bloom awards, which focus on recognising excellence in both landscaping and initiatives which bring community members together in nature in the urban garden that is Singapore.

The award recognises community gardeners that go above and beyond in their efforts, with the goal of encouraging 20 | Dunia December 2021

community gardeners to improve the natural surroundings while continuing to enjoy gardening as a fun and healthy activity. The assessment criteria includes not just garden quality, but also community engagement and sustainability efforts—all of which are part and parcel of UWCSEA’s holistic learning programme as it focuses on educating for peace and a sustainable future.

This year’s Platinum (with Diamond) Award recognises the extraordinary effort and care that continues to go into creating such a variety of spaces that enrich all our lives in so many ways.

COMMUNITY NEWS

Creating conditions for peacebuilding

Launching the UWCSEA IfP Toolkit As one of the cornerstones of UWCSEA’s peacebuilding curriculum, the Initiative for Peace (IfP) has been a definitive experience for many UWCSEA students and staff since the first IfP was held in 2002. We know because many have gone on to use the skills and understandings they were introduced to through participation in this oneyear programme to bear in their lives and their work beyond the College and across the world.

We also know because former Dover teacher Qamaruzzaman “Q” Amir (himself a UWC Pearson alumnus) was so inspired by his role as IfP Programme Leader that he left UWCSEA to pursue studies focusing on peacebuilding and Peace Education. He is currently completing his PhD dissertation on what makes the IfP so powerful and transformative, and his research, involving interviews with 48 former IfP facilitators and UWCSEA graduates from the period 2006–2018, has thrown into relief the powerful effect of IfP on our students. “Every single person, regardless of their profession or vocation, everyone from bankers to UN Development Programme workers to those still in university, all are asking, ‘What is my impact? What am I doing with my life right now to create impact?’ That’s a powerful testament—a sticky lesson. I look forward to sharing more when my dissertation is done.”

And so, as part of our mission-inspired commitment to using education as a force for peace, we were proud to launch ‘UWCSEA IfP Toolkit’ as part of our 50th anniversary impact programme. The launch on 30 September was the culmination of our September theme of Peace,

which was celebrated on a UWC Day that was capped off with a special livestream event: Perspectives on Peace, a conversation between Kishore Mahbubani and Carma Elliot.

At the launch, alumni from around the world joined staff and students in a discussion which highlighted just how valuable access to peacebuilding education can be for young people.

Felipe Andres Fontecilla Gutierrez '14, now President of Centre for Social Reality studies in Chile, explained, “Participating in IfP gave me a lot of theories to frame peace, peace building and conflict resolution, all of which were things I was interested in when I joined UWCSEA. It also gave me a lot of professional skills such as the facilitation training and curriculum development in building the programme for the conference that I continue to use in my work today.”

Kimheang (Kim) Chham '16 is currently Sustainability Fellow at Luther College in the US, and described the power of her IfP experience: “What was so special about IfP for me was the sense of empowerment I felt both in training as a student facilitator and during the launch of IfP Cambodia. I remember feeling this fueI from facilitating the conference in Mae Sot. I wanted to do more. I wanted to do more with young people and specifically with people from my hometown who had never felt empowered like me, but who I knew had such potential to do so much for our country. IfP and UWC instilled in me that the people in areas experiencing conflict need to do it for themselves. And in order to do it for themselves they need both the tools and a sense of empowerment. I wanted to bring that home and that’s what I was trying to achieve with the launch of IfP Cambodia after graduation.”

That matching of personal connection and empowerment was echoed by Geovania (Debby) Guterres Ornai '15, a former IfP delegate and facilitator who is currently working as an Evaluation and Reporting Officer with the UNDP in her home country of Timor Leste. It was the creation of a network of people all focused on creating peace that resonated most strongly, “I heard about peace a lot as a young person, but did not give it much thought until 2006 when Timor Leste found itself in a political crisis. I’d never seen anything like it. To then be involved in something like IfP in my teenage years; to see with my own eyes the agency and empowerment as a young person in the IFP conference; I still remember it now. IfP gives you the power as an agent for peace.”

Accessing the UWCSEA IfP Toolkit The toolkit gives educators, students, organisations and groups working to create peace, the resources required to create their own Initiatives for Peace programmes or conferences to meet the needs and circumstances of their own communities. UWCSEA IfP Toolkit Coordinator Louie Barnett is set to assist educators gain access the toolkit, and we hope to grow a global community of IfP programmes, crafted by young people who share the same aspirations for peace.

Download our White Paper to learn more about Peace Education at UWCSEA or explore the IfP multimedia story and apply for access to the UWCSEA IfP Toolkit:

December 2021 Dunia | 21

OPINION

See! See! Reflecting on OECD report: Beyond Academic Learning

By Nick Alchin, Head of UWCSEA East My father used to love the story of me as a 5 year old at a family gathering with my elderly and frail grandmother. It seems she was passing around a box of boiled sweets, and everyone had taken one, but when I reached to take mine she did not see me, snapped the lid shut, turned away and put the box up on a high shelf out of my reach. Feeling scolded and that I had done something wrong, I turned bright red, became teary and went and sat in a corner, head in hands. My father, seeing this, took down the box and gave me a sweet. I jumped up, and ran over to wave it under my grandmother’s nose, crying "See! See!" I love that story for the laughter it brought my father, and the fact that "See! See!" has become a family saying—wheeled out when someone feels somehow affirmed, or vindicated in a particular course of action. And it comes to mind now when I read the latest OECD report. Alas I am not holding up a sweet now, but a rather less digestible 173-page report entitled Beyond Academic Learning.

Andreas Schleicher, OECD Director of Education and Skills sets the context for my reaction in the report's introduction when he says, “it is important for education systems to strive for a holistic development of their students. This is more than the development of academic skills. It recognises the importance of social and emotional skills, students’ wellbeing and social relations in the school environment. When students feel they are treated in a fair way, when the school and its staff help students develop a sense of belonging, when they provide for a disciplined, structured and cooperative environment, when the environment is supportive and less punitive, their social and emotional skills develop better. They are less prone to destructive behaviour with its attendant societal consequences and primed to fulfil their potential.

In a world that is shifting, evolving and polarising as quickly as ours, schools need to send our children out with a fully packed tool box—not just of cognitive skills, but social and emotional ones too.”

OECD is perhaps better known for the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) which measures 22 | Dunia December 2021

15-year-olds’ ability to use their reading, mathematics and science knowledge and skills. These have long been seen as global metrics for academic schooling outcomes, and are perhaps particularly well known in our context of Singapore.

But as the OECD says these are just part of the story of what makes individuals, businesses and countries successful, and the OECD has now published an international comparative assessment of social and emotional skills that complements the picture. Based on data gathered in a 2019 survey on Social and Emotional Skills, the report investigates (across 10 globally distributed cities) student self-reports, and triangulates this data against reports and assessments from teachers, parents and principals.

The report is organised six broad domains, with 17 skills identified as relevant for success and well-being in children and adolescents: Curiosity, Tolerance, Creativity, Responsibility, Self Control, Persistence, Sociability, Assertiveness, Energy, Empathy, Trust, Co-operation, Stress Resistance, Optimism, Emotional Control, Achievement Motivation and Self Efficacy. These skills have, of course, long been championed by educators, parents, and those in business—anyone, in fact, who has ever tried to actually get anything done in an organisation. I know that readers in our UWCSEA community will have already identified similarities in the OECD list with a number of the skills and qualities identified in our UWCSEA Learner Profile, and the alignment with our UWCSEA Learning Principles.

The headline here is that the 2018–2020 OECD study strikingly confirms the importance of holistic education and the importance of Social and Emotional Skills for three overall reasons, confirming that students’ social and emotional skills are: 1. strong predictors of school grades across students’ background, age cohorts, and cities (especially being intellectually curious and persistent) 2. strongly related to students’ psychological well-being after accounting for socio-economic status and gender (especially being stress resistant, optimistic and in control of emotions)

Photos by Janrius Rogers

3. related to employment outcomes (past OECD studies shows that social and emotional skills are better predictors of income at age 25 compared to cognitive skills) One particularly interesting finding that emerges is that young people’s social and emotional skills dip as they enter adolescence. 15-year-olds, regardless of their gender or socio-economic background, reported lower skills than 10-year-olds with the differences being particularly pronounced in cases of skills such as optimism, trust, energy and sociability. The report rightly notes that while developmental factors may play a role here (the teenage years), educational systems focused on compliance may drive out curiosity and creativity as students grow older. There is a clear suggestion that heavy emphasis on compliance is damaging—which certainly resonated with us as a school that has enshrined autonomy as one of its three principles underlying student and adult wellbeing1.

The overall OECD takeaway is as simple as it is compelling: In a world that is shifting, evolving and polarising as quickly as ours, schools need to send our children out with a fully packed tool box—not just of cognitive skills, but social and emotional ones too. Schools would do well in providing opportunities for students to practice and learn about their creative potential in a variety of formats, such as individual and group activities, and competitive and cooperative formats.

Or speaking as a leader in one of the many schools that has been foregrounding an holistic approach for many decades– See! See!

22–23 April 2022 Join us for two days of inspiring, thought provoking discussion as we engage world renowned names in education and invite our whole community to explore how we can continue to deliver our unique missioninspired education well into the future. Keynote speakers will include: • Howard Gardner, Hobbs Professor of Cognition and Education, Harvard Graduate School of Education • Kishore Mahbubani, Distinguished Fellow, Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore • Musimbi Kanyoro, Chair of the Board of United World Colleges International, and Board member of CARE International and UN Global Compact • Andreas Schleicher, Director for Education and Skills, and Special Advisor on Education Policy to the Secretary-General at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) • Forrest Li, Founder, Chairman and Group CEO of Sea Scan the QR code to learn more and sign up here:

References OECD (2021), Beyond Academic Learning: First Results from the Survey of Social and Emotional Skills, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/92a11084-en.

OECD (2015) Skills for Social Progress: The Power of Social and Emotional Skills, OECD Publishing, Paris.

Footnote [1] The other two principles are competence and connectedness; read more in Dunia December 2019, Developing Self Determination, pgs 8–9

Adapted from original blog post on 5 October 2021—visit Nicks blog Education, Schools and Culture to explore more:

December 2021 Dunia | 23

INTERVIEW

Welcoming Gretchen DePoint to East Campus Meet the Middle School Principal Photo by Janrius Rogers

While Gretchen DePoint joined UWCSEA East as the Middle School Principal in August 2021, she only arrived in person during October. Students in the Capturing East Service recently interviewed her and her responses to questions showed commitment, consideration and care in the academic quality and wellbeing that students receive.

to the [UWC] mission is incredible,” addressing different instances on and off campus where students interacted with different individuals. “It’s engaging in the conversation and wanting to get to know the other person.” Gretchen shared that it is evident that people are dedicated to upholding the principles of UWC of establishing “human connection.”

Gretchen originally started her career in art therapy but very quickly found herself in the classroom after receiving a phone call from her past teacher requesting her presence in an educational institute. After experiencing being the daughter of a lifetime educator, she felt that “it was her place” and decided to continue pursuing education as a profession.

Prior to joining UWCSEA East, Gretchen worked in a diverse school in upstate New York, in an international school in Israel and most recently, as a Middle School Principal in Bangkok, Thailand.

Looking forward, Ms. DePoint shared her upcoming principles of making UWCSEA East a happier place for everyone to learn effectively and “bring their best selves,” and “create a community where everybody feels that they belong.” She expressed her interest in involving more students in College feedback and providing intentional opportunities for student voice.

What ultimately drew Ms. DePoint to UWCSEA was the value of the UWC movement: “[...] being dedicated to practicing a sustainable and peaceful future.” She strongly expressed her faith in “living what you value” and working collectively with different people to achieve a common goal. For Gretchen, it’s important to see beyond the physical nature of individuals to “look at people for who they are.” This form of understanding towards international communities has always been a subject that she has been passionate about, believing that “education is important in the world.”

Asked about her observations since arriving on campus, Gretchen shared that the day-to-day interactions between different people were astonishing. The “level of commitment

Football (soccer) is a passion, both as a coach and also as a player herself. She also loves art, and can be found working on ceramics and pottery as her hobby. Similarly, she wants students to enjoy themselves through the academic process and participation in all other aspects of learning. She believes that peer connection is very important as they develop increased autonomy and personal identities. One of her favourite times of the day is interacting with the students during lunch in the cafeteria or plaza.

Gretchen shared advice for students that’s applicable to all, “sleep, be kind to yourself, learn to grow from mistakes, and pause to realise the positive things that are around.” She added that it’s easy to focus on negatives and challenges, but one should aim to “focus on happiness,” acknowledge people around you, and remember to “pay forward kindness.”

​​ Grade 11 students Laura Varghese and Alexander Hudson interviewed Gretchen as part of the Capturing East Service Group. Find out more about other UWCSEA East community members on the studentpublished website: 24 | Dunia December 2021

COMMUNITY NEWS

Inspiration creating transformation Challenging student artists Photo by Danielle Solk

By Danielle Solk, Teacher of Art and Photography, Dover Campus Dover Campus students in the Magical Murals High School Service group have been working hard to add colour and bring eye-catching, meaningful designs to the campus. Over the last year and a half, approximately 30 students from Grades 9–11 have worked very hard on transforming parts of the Dover Campus into more visually engaging spaces. The first and most visible is the Changemakers mural, which is located along the gallery walk that connects the Primary School Block with the High School Block. The mural shows inspirational individuals, chosen by the students for their dedicated efforts in making a positive difference in the world.

After liaising with the Campus Facilities Committee to pinpoint suitable locations, the students brainstorm ideas based on the UWCSEA mission, skills and qualities and work closely with the relevant departments and/or with the Facilities team to make sure their ideas are based on the needs of the department.

also new to me, as I had never painted on such a large scale before, and it helped improve my painting skills. Saanvi’s design was beautiful and I was honored to be a part of this project!”

A new artwork in the Junior School playground, designed by Grade 9 student Seowon Hong, will also soon be on display.

The student artists are currently creating a number of further design ideas focusing on diversity, equity and inclusion for the Heritage Cafe area, a mural for the Music Department, a sign language message in support of linguistic landscaping, and recommended reading designs for the Grade 8 lockers in the Middle School English corridor.

In 2019, IB Art students worked on a community public art project at Marina Bay, in collaboration with Artbeatz, and as part of their CAS-linked Service activity a group of Grade 11 students designed and painted a mural in the Institute of Mental Health, to brighten up the children’s meeting area.

Most recently, a new mural in the Wellness and Counselling Centre has appeared. Designed and painted by Grade 10 student Saanvi who said, “It was a valuable experience.

I learnt how to design a mural that complemented its surroundings. I tried to make the mural as welcoming and soothing as possible, and used light colours that reflected the peaceful atmosphere of the centre. At first it was challenging to sketch something so large, especially on the higher parts of the wall because it required a ladder. However, it was worth it to see the finished piece up in the centre. It was my first time painting a mural, and I really enjoyed working with Ms Solk and Anaya on the project!”

Her partner in Art Anaya agreed, “Helping to paint the mural was an enjoyable and very calming experience, and I like that it gave me an opportunity to contribute to the school. It was

Photo by Danielle Solk

December 2021 Dunia | 25

FEATURE

Photo by Joseph Tan

Write for Rights: an opportunity for advocacy

By Frankie Meehan, Head of Service and Teacher of English as an Additional Language and Theory of Knowledge, Dover Campus The IB Diploma Creativity, Activity, Service Guide (IBO, 2015) identifies four types of service action: direct (e.g. weekly visits to a nursing home); indirect (e.g. fundraising for a turtle conservation project overseas); advocacy (“students speak on behalf of a cause or concern to promote action on an issue of public interest”); and research (“Students collect information [...], analyse data, and report on a topic of importance to influence policy or practice“). In schools across the world, where the COVID-19 pandemic has curtailed direct service, the other three types have taken on new importance. Many educators and schools tread warily, however, when it comes to advocacy. Sometimes this is for fear of breaching national laws that prohibit “political” activism in schools. In other cases it’s about keeping the peace within their community in order to avoid uncomfortable conversations or self examination. And, in more traditional schools, anything outside of the academic domain is perceived as an irrelevant distraction.

At UWCSEA, despite these constraints, we run an annual letter writing campaign, Write for Rights, that gives students

26 | Dunia December 2021

the opportunity to send handwritten protest letters to heads of state, government ministers and CEOs, and letters of solidarity to human rights defenders and their families or friends. We take our inspiration—and many of our publicity materials—from an Amnesty International event of the same name, but with Amnesty’s permission we obscure their name and logo on our posters. For safeguarding reasons, we also omit any text encouraging writers to post messages or photos on social media.

In December 2021 the final envelope on Dover was not yet tallied as Dunia went to print, but with 3,625 counted, we surpassed the 3,600 letters penned in December 2020. The total has risen steadily since we wrote 1,665 letters at our first event in 2017. We run the campaign throughout the week of Human Rights Day (10 December) and students from Kindergarten to Grade 12 are involved. High School students address roughly eight cases while Middle School students focus on a smaller number of cases that fit with a Write for Change unit in English lessons. Most of the cases students choose to amplify in our community are selected from a list created by Amnesty International, but we sometimes include an issue that our students identify as urgent. Thus, in 2017 we focused on the Rohingya refugee crisis and in 2018 sent letters of support to Amaya Coppens Zamora '14 LPC, who

Photo by Joseph Tan

My generation really cares about humanitarian and environmental crises, and when we read about injustices and inaction on social media, we just feel angry and impotent. Write for Rights gives us a chance to take practical action.”

Melis Asiyo, Grade 12, Dover Campus

was being detained in Nicaragua. Our youngest students write letters on a theme that connects with their Units of Study. In 2019, for example, each student—guided by a template—wrote to their parents or guardians urging them to commit to a specific practical step that would help reduce their family’s carbon footprint.

At UWCSEA Dover, we run the event with some fanfare. Our central plaza becomes a colourful gallery of large format posters raising awareness about the Write for Rights cases.

This area also serves as a “post office” for finished letters.

Music with a human rights focus is played at lunchtime. Our main library plays (silent but subtitled) videos about the cases on a loop. There are writing stations in the libraries, the Languages corridor and in the Middle School “pods”.

For maximum efficiency, we provide readymade letters that students can either copy or adapt. Even copying a short letter by hand is hard work, and the event highlights how rare this kind of letter writing is nowadays. It’s great practice for the Formal Letter text type in Language B! There are other ways to run Write for Rights. Our East Campus, for example, runs it as an overnight marathon and has an exclusive focus on refugees. Last year, like Dover, East Campus teachers incorporated the event into an English unit, involving students across the whole of the Middle School.

The Dover Middle School has just set up a Write for Change group that will meet weekly throughout the year and then coordinate the school-wide event in December. Whatever the format, it is an empowering experience for students to write directly to a government minister or someone who is being persecuted for their work to protect human rights or the environment. You witness a room fall silent as students apprehend the injustice of a case and then engage in the intimate act of writing a “real” letter that has the potential to make a difference.

Around May each year, Amnesty produces a progress report.

It is important to share the success stories with students, but important, too, to be realistic about what can be achieved.

When our letters do work, it is because they are part of a larger international campaign and that, in turn, may be complemented by diplomatic efforts, press coverage etc.

Advocacy is just one lever in a complex system. If we can help students grasp the complexity while at the same time giving them hope that every letter counts, then we are setting them up to be changemakers in the future.

References International Baccalaureate Organisation. Creativity, activity, service guide (For students graduating in 2017 and after). IB Publishing Ltd, 2015.

December 2021 Dunia | 27

FEATURE

Photo by Mitzi Mapa-Contes

There is more than one way to be a UWCSEA family

Supporting inclusive classrooms

By Vikki Wright, Primary School Vice Principal (Infants) and Andrea Strachan, Infant School Curriculum Coordinator, Dover Campus When people ask why we work at UWCSEA, there are many answers to this question: our passion for education, a commitment to developing young people, excellent colleagues, access to amazing facilities and resources, opportunities for world class professional development–all made possible by the shared purpose of our inspiring mission.

More recently, as we have moved to further integrate our mission into our daily lives at school, it is also because we have a deepening appreciation for the diversity we see around us in our classrooms and community. As a school we have a deep commitment to purposefully considering our words and actions to help all children feel seen, supported and heard.

What does this look like in an Infant School classroom?

When we want to value and acknowledge everyone’s family we all start the year by bringing into school a family photograph. This is framed and shared and differences are celebrated. These are proudly displayed in the classroom for all to see. In K1 one of the first projects the children engage in is called, “What is my world?” and this is an opportunity for 28 | Dunia December 2021

families to scrapbook their child’s world. Many children talk about countries they are connected to, they talk about who lives in their family, all alongside their interests and favourite foods. This discussion is a starting point for future work on identity, “Who am I?” Teachers and staff also share their own personal identity stories.

In the UWCSEA Infant School, as we started to critically look at the materials and resources available in our classrooms and library, we realised that although we are plentifully resourced with books, many books we have in our school are not necessarily “mirrors” of our students or their families.

Dr. Rudine Sims Bishop is an American educator who has dedicated her life to research and exploring multicultural children’s literature. She published an article in 1990 called, “Mirrors, Windows and Sliding Glass Doors.” In this article, Dr. Bishop shared that books can be mirrors, allowing children to see themselves and their experiences. Books can also be windows, allowing learners to look into other worlds and compare them to their own. Books can also be sliding glass doors, allowing learners to enter other worlds. As international school educators, how might we ensure that our book collection serves as mirrors, windows and sliding glass doors to all of our families?

One of the beauty’s of the UWC movement is the plurality of voices that we’ve got, and every voice is valuable.”

Faith Abiodun, Executive Director, UWC International speaking at the Kishore Mahbubani Speaker Series event on 13 December 2021 This year, our Infant School Teachers have access to funds through a UWCSEA 50th Anniversary Innovation Grant to source and purchase new books to add to our classroom and library collections, with a focus on building resources to support our ongoing work in Diversity, Equity and Inclusion.

A group of our teachers has been meeting monthly, working together on this project and we are excited to bring these stories to life in our Primary School classrooms. We have been connecting with local experts, such as Denise Tan from Closetful of Books, to connect with smaller publishers throughout Southeast Asia in order to locate children’s literature that may not be as readily found or accessible via traditional book suppliers.

Our Grade 1 students are currently engaged in a Unit of Study focused on “celebrations,” and the many ways in which these are a reflection of our families and our culture. We have been working hard to introduce stories that contain characters reflective of the diversity found in our UWCSEA families. Do we share stories where family members might not look like one another? Multicultural families? Multiracial families?

Single parent families? Extended families? LGBTQ+ families?

Families with members who may have a physical disability?

What about stories of adoption? All families are welcome at UWCSEA, and we are striving to be inclusive for all.

As we began to collect materials for the unit, we looked carefully for books that may provide mirrors or windows for our students. We were able to find a book that spoke beautifully about the traditions associated with a wedding, whilst providing an opportunity to present a different ending than we were maybe expecting. Many children were able to raise their hand to share suggestions, make connections and ask questions. Representation matters, and we are coming to learn just how important it is that all our students see themselves and their families in the stories we share at school.

We have already begun to source many rich books to help supplement our curriculum, and our teachers are incredibly excited and engaged in this work. The Primary Libraries on both campuses already carry many of these books, and if families are interested in adding some richer materials into their own homes please get in touch with Dover Librarian, Kurt Wittig or Head of Library Services on East Philip Williams who would be happy to loan some of the books available in the library or to receive suggestions that reflect your own family story.

Scan the QR code check out our the libguides resources:

This year, a number of initiatives seed funded through the 50th Anniversary Innovation Grants are exploring creative, impactful, scalable initiatives to improve teaching and learning across the campuses.

Staff will present their progress at the upcoming UWCSEA Forum 22–23 April 2022.

Scan the QR code to learn more and register here: Photo by Mitzi Mapa-Contes

December 2021 Dunia | 29

ALUMNI STORIES

Bringing the mission to life Launching our values in Action Award

By Renee Gallant, Alumni Relations Senior Manager As part of our ongoing work to identify how the College can measure the impact of our UWCSEA education, and therefore be accountable to delivering our commitment to the UWC mission, we have begun to expand our thinking on our guiding statements by describing the ‘mission competencies’ that we hope our alumni take with them as they leave us and will bring to their lives beyond the College. Beyond the ‘Essential Literacies’ which all schools aspire for their students to gain, we have identified four additional ‘mission competencies’ as key ways in which we aspire for our alumni bring their learning from UWCSEA to life in the world: • Peace • Sustainability • Inclusion • Community wellbeing The UWCSEA Values In Action Award recognises significant and sustained impact made by our alumni community at the local, national, and international level and celebrates those who have gone on to bring UWCSEA’s mission and values to Find out more and nominate yourself or another inspiring alumnus for the 2022 Alumni Values in Action Awards here:

life through action which creates a lasting, positive impact.

We have done this by using the following criteria to guide our assessment of the award submissions: • evidence of impact e.g. scope of impact, resources saved, money raised or other financial contribution; elements of positive change • sustained and ongoing impact of the work or activity being undertaken • evidence of personal leadership • potential to engage with current UWCSEA learners By recognising alumni who are expressing these competencies through their actions and lives, we hope to inspire future generations of students to live a UWC-driven life beyond their time in Singapore at UWCSEA. In announcing the inaugural awardees, College President Carma Elliot said, “In effect, with the launch of these awards we wish to further create a cyclical economy of learning, encouraging our alumni community to continue to engage with us as they leave us to take action and then return with their time and their stories to further enrich the spirit of community and commitment to learning in which they flourished as students. While the truth may be that we have always done this, we would like to celebrate and find ways to inspire our community by expanding our notions of what living the mission in action might be.”

Introducing our 2021 Awardees Aditi Varshneya ’14

Alanna Sethi ’01

Ben Howitt ’11

Mission Competencies: Sustainability, Community Wellbeing

Mission Competencies: Community Wellbeing

Mission Competency: Sustainability

Impact: Mental health advocate and founder of HOPE, a non-profit initiative dedicated to improving communities’ mental wellbeing

Impact: Veterinarian and Founder/ Managing Director of Pan Animalia Galápagos

Impact: Zero waste advocate and organiser of Uptown Fridge whose dual mission is to reduce food waste by rescuing excess food and to help those dealing with food insecurity 30 | Dunia December 2021

Catherine McKinley ’89

Chihiro Isozaki ’11

Claudia Bennett ’12

Mission Competencies: Peace, Sustainability, Inclusion, Community Wellbeing

Mission Competencies: Peace, Sustainability, Inclusion, Community Wellbeing

Mission Competencies: Peace, Inclusion, Community Wellbeing

Impact: Founder and Director of the Green Shoots International School, Hoi An, Vietnam

Impact: International human rights lawyer, diversity-and-inclusion advocate and race activist, volunteer crisis hotline counsellor and community mutual aid organiser

Impact: International Humanitarian Law Fellow at the American Red Cross and former volunteer at refugee camps in Greece

Emmanuel Dean ’14 Miguel Angel Zambrano Boy ’14

Evelyn Mayo ’13

Havishyan Thakral ’16

Mission Competencies: Sustainability, Community Wellbeing

Mission Competencies: Sustainability, Community Wellbeing

Mission Competency: Inclusion

Impact: Co-founders of BOOMI, whose vision is to build an extensive and trustworthy eco-system for all things sustainability in mainland China

Impact: Community Educator working with low-income people on housing, environmental and community advocacy concerns with skills in Grassroots Organising, Facilitation, Environmental Justice, and Strategic Advocacy

Karla Huaman Ruiz ’13 Eyner Roman Lopez ’14

Kudakwashe Mushaike ’14

Lola Sweeney ’21

Mission Competency: Inclusion

Mission Competencies: Peace, Inclusion, Community Wellbeing

Mission Competencies: Peace, Community Wellbeing

Impact: Founder of Below The Surface, a community organisation that celebrates vulnerability in men through real and open conversation and building communities of support

Impact: Humanitarian and activist for Afghani refugees

Nidhi Kapur ’01

Rachel ChhoaHoward ’05

Renuka Ramanujam ’12

Mission Competencies: Inclusion, Community Wellbeing

Mission Competencies: Peace, Sustainability, Inclusion, Community Wellbeing

Mission Competency: Sustainability

Impact: Co-founders of Arriba, the first community of first generation college students and professionals in Peru whose goal is to catalyse systemic change

Impact: Child protection specialist in conflict zones in Liberia, DRC among others; worked for War Child, Save the Children and more

Impact: Co-founder of Enklude, a Jakartabased social enterprise whose vision is to empower persons with disabilities to become financially independent, and future leaders of the 21st century, through education, employment, and entrepreneurship initiatives

Impact: Amnesty International researcher and human rights advocate specialising in South East Asia

Impact: Designer and founder of Mudra, a conceptual, art led design studio focusing on our relationship to the planet, as well as each other and turning the unexpected into beautiful conversation.

Patrick Rouxel ’84

Samay Bansal ’16

Sophie Barbier ’12

Mission Competency: Sustainability

Mission Competency: Community Wellbeing

Mission Competencies: Peace, Sustainability

Impact: Independent filmmaker dedicated to rainforest conservation, animal welfare and CEO and Founder of Sun Bear Outreach

Impact: Founder of Million Meals Mission who have provided over 306,000 meals to food-insecure communities in Cambodia, Yemen, Lebanon, USA and India over the past five years

Impact: Advocate of multidisciplinary impact and Sustainable Development Goals with extensive experience in non-profits, theories of change, and impact assessment

December 2021 Dunia | 31

COMMUNITY NEWS

College President Carma Elliot and author Graham Silverthorne with a life-size replica of the opening chapter. Photo by Joseph Tan.

Celebrating 50 Years United: The Story of UWCSEA in Singapore When planning our 50th anniversary, we knew we wanted to write our story. The resulting book, 50 Years United: The Story of UWCSEA in Singapore, is reflective of the way in which we are celebrating our past while looking to the future. Launched on 16 December, the book describes the journey of the College as it has grown into a world renowned international school. It combines stories of truly seminal moments in the development of the College with an exploration of the themes that make us a UWC—service, sustainability, outdoor education, peace building, changemaking and the development of our holistic, mission-aligned curriculum.

Two themes, important in our 50th anniversary celebrations, emerged in the telling of our story.

First, it is focused on our inextricable connection to Singapore, as the place which made us. Throughout our 50 years we have grown and learned alongside Singapore, and we are enormously grateful to have had Singapore as an inspiration.

We are immensely proud to be part of today’s global hub for educational excellence and innovation.

The second theme centres on our 50 years of unity, by

Order your copy of 50 Years United: The Story of UWCSEA in Singapore:

32 | Dunia December 2021

highlighting the strength and depth of the partnerships and connections that have grown since our founding. We were honoured to welcome representatives from many of our Singapore partners at the book launch, those who have helped us to connect meaningfully to our local community through our service programme or through their time at the College. Through these partnerships, our students have built deep connections and our alumni bring those fond memories of Singapore across the world.

We were honoured to share a message from Singapore’s Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong at the launch of the book, in which he acknowledged these connections: “My warmest congratulations to UWC for 50 successful years in Singapore. … Throughout this journey the College has made valuable contributions to the wider community especially through your vibrant service programmes. Singapore will always be an international hub, open and welcoming to ideas and talent and we thank UWC for helping to make Singapore a good place for expatriates to live and work. I look forward to the College continuing to play a valuable role in Singapore for the next 50 years and beyond. Happy Golden Jubilee.”

Watch Prime Minister Lee’s message and explore more of our celebrations:

Share our stories

Publish your stories Share your community news via the website today

Add your photos Via our Panorama page

Experience

Read. Publish. Share. Subscribe. perspectives.uwcsea.edu.sg

Subscribe to newsletters Community News and Points of View