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It’s not every day that you get the chance to support a new generation of young green leaders who are taking matters into their own hands and developing sustainable solutions now. Green School students are taking action – from school BioBuses that run on used cooking oil, to waste solutions, growing food and establishing renewable energy solutions, they are on it! Local Balinese and children from all corners of the globe have come together at Green School and they are mobilized and ready for more action, to create a better world for themselves and future generations. It’s up to us to give them the chance.

We can help you make a difference in the world. Join us in raising $500,000 to fund Green School scholarships for Balinese children and to build a multi-purpose Community Innovation Hub that will deliver better waste management solutions and scale up youth activism activities locally and globally. This is the Green School Change Maker Challenge!

Green School Bali was invited by the Earth Day Committee to join their group Roadmap Climate Challenge fundraising campaign – building a community of doers to take action.  Taking action is in our DNA at Green School and we feel privileged to join other organisations in this friendly challenge.

The Earth Day Committee is offering a $100,000 grant as prize money to the organisation that raises the most money. We are feeling nervous but hopeful as the crowd rises and supports us to achieve our goal of  building a Community Innovation Hub and funding more local Balinese children to join Green School through our Local Scholarship Program.  Our generous donors have helped us get to over $120,000, so far.

Green School is a registered not-for-profit and we know we are aiming high and hopeful. We have a lot to do, and in partnership with you, we can do it. We are talking about serious, grassroots action, with seriously impressive impacts. Take a look at some of what we have achieved so far:

• 31 Green School scholarships to Indonesian students empowering them to be the change they want to see in their own country and beyond.
• Engaged 328 students from local Balinese partner schools in Language and Sustainability Learning.
• Established a waste management and recycling facility on a mission towards zero waste. Over 1 ton of trash each month is sorted, re-used or recycled – saving it from ending in the ocean and landfills.
• Waste management solutions rolled-out to six local schools in Bali, reaching over 4,000 students.
• Reduced 3.5 tons of CO2 emissions per month through the student-led BioBus transport service.
• Student activists represented the voice of youth at Climate Change Conferences (COP21, Paris and COP22 Morocco) and the Conference of Youth (COY11).
• Raised awareness of the waste crisis across Indonesia through a performing arts production, ‘Noble Material’, led by Indonesian students, for Indonesian students.

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Let’s do even more, together! Every single donation will be used to support local children and waste-related educational and learning activities. We happily share all our creative sustainable solutions with the 100,000+ people who connect with Green School each year. With your donation we will:

• Build a Community and Waste Recycling Education Centre (Innovation Hub) – over 700 children will be able to incubate, investigate, implement and share even better waste management solutions. $100,000 of campaign money will allow us to build this and fling the doors open to students and their ideas.
• Expand waste management solutions – let’s turn even more trash into desirable treasures by expanding the current reuse-recycle program. Turning plastic waste into usable products and art, up-cycling fashion design using repurposed/used clothing, maker-space equipment to repair household items, plus more, can all happen with $50,000 of campaign money to kit-out the innovation lab with the right equipment.
• Activate young people through the arts: we know that performing arts is a powerful platform to educate and inspire youth movements to tackle real world problems. We can scale-up performances, such as ‘Noble Material’, take them on the road even more, promote activism and create kits for other schools to use with $50,000 of campaign money.
• Activate more local change makers within Indonesia: let’s give even more opportunities for Balinese children to access an international standard of education and be the change they want to see in their island, their country and the world. Indonesia faces some of the world’s biggest environmental problems and $300,000 of campaign money will fully fund the current 31 full-time Green School scholars enrolled and allow us to welcome 3 more scholarship students into the School.

• Thank You Prizes
• The top individual donor of the campaign will be able to leave their legacy on the Community Center by having it named after them. Your legacy in beautiful bamboo. 

DONATE NOW 

Some very special thank-you prizes are on offer for donors, so please take a look and take action. Click below to get more information and inspiration, to donate and to spread the word by sharing our campaign and video. The Change Maker Challenge closes very soon, so please act now as the finish line is fast approaching on May 18, at 1:59pm ET.

Article adapted from Green School’s Post Here. 

The post Activate A New Generation Of Green Leaders appeared first on Green School Bali.

Our Monday morning parent sessions closed the year with the discussion of… what constitutes normal for a child growing up in an expat environment, within an international school, born to foreign parents, living in a multi-national community?

All agreed, the decisions that parents have to make when bringing their children to live in Bali, present many and varied challenges. There was a certain consciousness required to take on an expat life and deal with the consequences of moving a family away from its initial starting point. How do you support your child in this peripatetic lifestyle? After all, their coping mechanisms and social and neurological needs, very often, can be very different from yours.

Dutch, Japanese, Australian, Singaporean, Danish, American, Canadian, African, Balinese and Arab parents were all represented in the discussion. Despite the various inherent cultures in the group, all had a surprising amount in common.

One of the mothers who conceived the Monday gatherings, Tatjana, is a German woman who has lived in America, married a Japanese man and is now living in Bali. She says her children hanker for Japan because of their happy early childhood memories.

Joyti, is Dutch and married to Australian, Vismai. Their two children are unsure of where to call home. One child is more adaptable than the other.

Terry has one daughter in Denmark and one on Bali. She and her husband come from Spain, Germany, Egypt and Greece, collectively, but their business is in Indonesia. Their focus is to educate their children to have choices wherever they might end up in the world.

Michaela is also from Holland but has lived in the UK and Africa. She still feels very Dutch but her children, not so. Home for them is where their school is.

Between Pauline and her husband they are Japanese, African and Portuguese but the nature of his work has seen them live all over the world. Paris, for them, is home because that is where the children were born.

Audrey is a lecturer on Middle Eastern Studies and, along with Tatjana, is one of the women behind the Monday morning gatherings. She is from Berkeley, California, was married to an Arab, has two grown daughters living abroad and a son at Green School. She describes her family as “exotic Americans who belong to the world”.

In contrast to the western contingent was Balinese father, Tree, who has children at the school,in addition to his daughter who graduated last year and left Bali to study at Quest University in British Columbia, Canada.

Tree painted a picture of the cultural obligations of a Balinese family. Most Balinese never leave the Banjar, but, if they do, the expectation is your roots remain with the community. There should always be a family member to represent you. All the ceremonies ensure you remain down to earth and connected.

“If you do not belong to a Banjar, it is very embarrassing and isolating. You are a Mr Nobody and, nobody likes a Mr Nobody.”

Tree loves the cross cultural learning at Green School which allows students to pay deep attention to subjects beyond the text books.

The head of the meeting, for this session, returned to Bali with her daughter, who is in grade 10, after a stint in India. For her, home can be a place, a group of people, a feeling or all three. She remembers the plane landing in Denpasar and just exhaling with a deep sense of relaxation.

“It was almost a cellular thing,” she said.

“I remember thinking, oh my God, I can stop pretending I’m someone else,” she told the group.

Research on third culture children has found some struggle in forming trusting relationships. Fortunately, the globality of social media now means children can remain connected between worlds.

It was agreed that being part of a community that offered support, a sense of belonging and safety was key for both the children and the parents. All left the session grateful for the fact they were part of the group.

The idea behind the morning sessions came about because, “the kids have so much fun learning at Green School, we figured, why don’t we?” says Tatjana.

We wanted an open forum where everybody interested in sharing their knowledge or expertise could do so.

Audrey’s first session dealt with the Arab world, the Middle East and the wider world of Islam.

There are so many contradicting viewpoints about Islam, Muslim and Arabs. Audrey taught about the geographic area of the Middle East and how it constitutes not just Arabs, who represent 1/5th of the world’s Muslims, but Persians, Turks and Israelis. Not all Arabs, however, are Muslim and there are many connections between the three major monotheistic faiths of Judaism, Islam and Christianity.

Tatjana’s second session drew on her 8 years in Japan and focused on the wonderful story telling at the centre of Japanese history and culture, including their cinema and anime by Hayao Miyasaki.

For more information on Third Culture Kids

The post Raising Children of The World appeared first on Green School Bali.