At CAS Trips, we are all about finding fun, innovative, and meaningful ways to bring the CAS journey to life and allow students to get the most out of their IBDP experience. Through our migration to online programming over the last year, we have remained focused on providing students, schools, and teachers with all the resources they need to actively engage with the 5 Stages of CAS in a thoughtful and comprehensive manner.
That is why we are relaunching our CAS Project Challenge as a means of motivating young people to dig into their CAS Project requirements and initiate real change in the process.
As CAS Trip Director, Simon Armstrong, explains, “the CAS Project Challenge is a ready-made model with resources to help alleviate the struggle that goes on every year for students to instigate and organize their CAS Projects. It serves as the foundation upon which a truly consequential project can be built.”
Although our Students Challenges are open to all young people with a desire to enact positive change, the structure we have created explicitly follows the 5 Stages of CAS in order to serve as a springboard for IBDP students. Our worksheets and methodology have been carefully developed to guide students through the process and serve as an added resource while remaining aligned with the CAS Project guidance and instructions they receive in the classroom.
As always, the underpinning aim of the CAS Project Challenge is to give students the tools needed to work together in collaboration to invent or campaign for something that will make a positive impact in their community. Upon completion, the projects can be submitted for entry to the contest through a short video showcasing all stages of the process. At this point, students are eligible to win an all-expenses-paid trip for the whole team to present their CAS Project Challenge at one of our Global Student Conferences in Boston, Edinburgh, or Singapore.
Sound good so far? Here is how to get started.
Each CAS Project Challenge begins with building a team. Consisting of 3-6 members, teams can determine the roles best suited to each members’ strengths by taking this Changemaker Quiz. Once roles have been assigned, it is time to get to work!
Committed to bolstering the mission of the UN SDGs, the framework we provide encourages students to begin their project by thinking globally, applying an internationally-minded approach and considering some of the most significant challenges that our planet and society are currently facing.
Next, it is time to localize that newly acquired knowledge and devise a strategy for organizing and engaging in a long-term collaborative CAS Project that can be enacted in the participants’ home community. You can find a full breakdown of project evaluation here and refer to this page when you have a project ready for submission. Entries will be accepted until 12 pm CET on the 20th of December 2021.
We look forward to seeing this year’s projects! It is a true pleasure for our team to witness the innovative, original, and thoughtfully executed projects that students never fail to come up with.
Photo credits: https://unsplash.com/@rodlong
