UWC Day
UWC Day
Monday, 24 March 2008
Last Wednesday, we stopped classes for the day to celebrate UWC Day. This was the fourth time we have celebrated this day, which is a time to reflect upon our place in the wider United World Colleges movement.
This year, the theme for the day was “United World Colleges as agents to promote service to people in need”.
We began the day with a short drive to Renaissance College. Our aim was to hear an interactive multi-media talk by Head of Renaissance College, Mr Peter Kenny, about the place of the IB in UWCs with respect to service. Before coming to Hong Kong, Peter worked with the IB in Singapore to support its schools-to-schools program. He was there at the time of the large tsunami, and thus became involved in relief work in Aceh, helping IB schools such as UWCSEA become involved in making links with local schools and aiding the relief work. Peter spoke feelingly about the work of the IB in this area, including the tragic story of the village where funds were raised to re-build the primary school, but it was all to no avail as they later learnt that every child in the village had been killed by the tsunami.
It is sometimes asserted that the mission of the IB and the UWCs are in some sort of conflict, as the IB does not emphasise service to the same extent as the UWCs. Peter’s talk did a great deal to correct that misunderstanding. The IB is clearly not “anti-service”, although perhaps it does allow IB schools a little too much flexibility and freedom to side-step authentic life-changing service such as UWCs insist upon.
From Renaissance College, the students travelled to Crossroads, where they participated in a simulation exercise modelling the poverty experienced on a daily basis in a rural village in India.
UWC Day was certainly not a ‘day off’, nor was it a particularly restful experience. It was designed to be challenging and provocative, and perhaps even confrontational at times. It was certainly encouraging so many students express their appreciation for the opportunity to consider in depth what it means to be a UWC student.
Being a UWC student is not a reward for previous hard work or a simply ticket to a good university or a well paid job. It is a call to serve others, and that message was expressed very clearly last Wednesday to anyone with ears to listen.
Thanks to Stella for all her superb organisation, to Peter, Selena and the Crossroads team for their input, to our own student facilitators and to all who participated so enthusiastically and meaningfully.
As a follow-up to UWC Day, I have put together galleries of some photos I have taken during my visits over the past four years to each of the UWCs that I have managed to visit, which is 10 of the 12 Colleges. I have done this especially to make images more available to students in Hong Kong who are considering applying for scholarships to attend one of the overseas UWCs. There are 231 images, and they can accessed by following THIS LINK, as well as through the new ‘United World Colleges’ link on the front page of my website.
Dr Selena Sermeno leads students through the afternoon session of UWC Day on Wednesday 19th March.