On Friday, 7 September ISA grade 11 students took part in the school’s annual Serve the City project. From the early hours of the morning until the late afternoon, the students served their local communities in Amsterdam and Amstelveen in a myriad of different ways: from spending quality time with elderly members of their neighbourhood, to working closely and creatively with people with disabilities, to even getting their hands dirty in cultivating and maintaining local shared-community gardens.
The Serve the City day is an opportunity for newly initiated IB Diploma Programme students to give back to their local communities, and to be inspired for ways in which they might ultimately fulfil an important strand of the CAS (Creativity, Activity, Service) requirements in their IB diploma studies.
The IB Diploma (studied in grades 11 and 12) is intended to prepare students for more than just academic life after high school; it is also designed to foster positive attitudes within its candidates, such as intercultural understanding, open-mindedness and a sense of responsibility towards other people and our environment. CAS plays a key role in this sense of holistic development that the IB Diploma aims to encourage.
Serve the City gives students an insight into the kind of real, positive and direct impact they can have on people’s lives in their communities during the Service strand of their own CAS work. Importantly, it also links in closely with ISA’s mission to educate for international understanding. This year, some very worthy causes were in receipt of some very valuable help, so well done to all the students and staff mentors involved!
Find out more about CAS in the IB Diploma Programme here, and the IB Diploma Programme at ISA here.
