ASD volunteers work in Maldives, Mozambique

TRIBUNE NEWS NETWORK

DOHA STUDENTS and teachers at the American School of Doha (ASD) volunteered during their Eid holidays to work on two of ASD’s homegrown conservation and service projects in the Maldives and Mozambique as part of this year’s ASD international service trips.

Although school was closed for a week, learning continued for the students and faculty as they journeyed beyond the walls of school where the globe became their classroom, circumstance became their teacher, and experience became their examiner.

Twenty students visited the Maldives to work with the Maldives Whale Shark Research Programme (MWSRP), a registered NGO in the UK as a part of the Conservation Strand Service Trip led by IT Director Bob Elliott and ASD teacher Carol Cayford. The MWSRP works to monitor the population of whale sharks in the Marine Protected Area off South Ari Atoll in the Maldives archipelago.

Students worked with marine biologists and spent time in the water documenting whale sharks as well as studying reef ecology and the impact of human and environmental factors on these keystone ecosystems of the ocean.

This is the third year that the ASD has partnered with the MWSRP and this trip was again outfitted by International Travel for Schools (ITS) which is one of the main outfitters used by ASD. The group also donated school supplies to local schools on the islands of Mamaagili and Dhigura.

Seventeen students led by Chi-Yan Shang, Diane Caristo and Maria Chaplin returned to Mozambique to work to improve school infrastructure in the rural area of Magude as a part of ASD’s Footy 4 Freedom project. Footy 4 Freedom was originally started by ASD graduate Lawrence Chaplin as a fundraiser to support schools in Mozambique that were dedicated to working in communities with a high number of AIDS orphans.

This year, students worked at Escola Primaria Completa de Mawandla to build a fence around the property to secure it from trespassers, traffic and roving animals. This was a primary safety concern as traffic and animals often went through the school compound while students were present. Like many rural schools in Mozambique, many of the students’ families have been in some way touched by HIV/AIDS. The Footy 4 Freedom trip is supported by fundraisers at ASD which go towards paying construction costs. Any shortfall in fundraising is covered by ASD’s sponsor in Mozambique, Tongaat Hulett, a South African sugar company which has a myriad of community outreach projects in the communities that they operate.

Tongaat Hulett also hosted the ASD group at their Estate in Xinavane for the duration of the build. School supplies were donated by the ASD group to the Mawandla School.

Organisers said that both the trips underscore the value that ASD places on living out its core values of compassion and respect. These trips also support the objectives of ASD’s International Baccalaureate CAS programme to help students become globally aware.

The next ASD humanitarian strand trip operating over Spring Break of 2013 will be for Sichuan, China, to work in the post-2008 earthquake zone. The conservation strand trip will take students to South Africa’s Thanda Game Reserve in Kwa-Zulu Natal Province to work on a predator conservation project.