Creating Collaborative Communities
Curing the World
As part of integrated project with Year 10 students at Chinese International School in Hong Kong, known as Curing the World, students learned about and championed 40 different NGO's worldwide that focus on curing and eradicating infectious diseases. These NGO's were evaluated for their mission, strategies and impact through a tournament structure to answer the question: which one was the most impactful NGO for eradicating poverty and disease and worthy of a financial contribution of funds raised by the students.
Teacher Collaboration
Curing the World is a multi- dimensional project involving five different subject areas: English, Humanities, Science, Product Design and Visual Arts. The primary focus of the project was to learn about the links between poverty and infectious disease. The teaching team devised multiple ways to explore and understand this link. To help students evaluate solutions, a tournament bracket structure encompassing 40 different NGOs that play an important role in helping to eliminate disease and poverty was devised.
Student Empowerment
In addition to their research and analysis of global NGOs that play an important role in helping to eliminate disease and poverty, students reached out to the NGOs and conducted interviews. In teams, teams, they created Pixar pitches, podcasts, spoken word, and advertisement campaigns designed to explain and promote the work of the NGOs. Furthermore, students fundraised to support what they ultimately voted to be the NGO most worthy of receiving the funds.
Impact
Not only did students learn about a variety of solutions and efforts to cure the world of poverty and disease, they also were able to make a difference by providing a financial contribution to the NGO they deemed most worthy in terms of mission, scope and impact. The pride and confidence they gained in themselves to make a difference was keenly felt and laid the foundation for them to continue to do so.
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To listen to a podcast from the Curing the World tournament,
click here.