Community Project
The Community Project focuses on community and service, encouraging students to investigate their rights and responsibilities to engage in community service. The Community Project allows students to become aware of needs in various communities and to address those needs through service learning. The community project engages in a sustained, in-depth inquiry that leads to service as action in the community as a means of consolidating learning. The Community Project can be completed either individually or in groups of up to four students.
At Dunya School, students in MYP year 4 are expected to complete the Community Project, spending at least 15 hours on it.
There are 4 types of services which students can accomplish;
Direct service: Service that involves direct interaction with a specific cause or problem, such as people, the environment, or animals. For example, creating a waste management policy for a specific community, volunteering at a local orphanage/school, assisting elderly neighbors, planting, organizing and participating in a school event, collecting and delivering non-perishable food to the homeless, and so on.
Indirect service: Service that benefits to the targeted community by the hand of an organization/others. Examples include/can be more: developing materials to support literacy improvements, designing, manufacturing, and marketing an appropriate product you could sell, with the profit being donated to a charity at the same time, raising awareness for that charity, updating the website for a local orphanage, organizing a movie night to benefit a local NGO, fundraising for an NGO, or participating in an environmental cause such as Earth Hour, and establishing a library in the orphanage
Advocacy: Advocacy is the act of arguing in favor of something or someone to support. Before taking action, you must conduct research on the chosen topic (which may be related to something you learned in class).
Joining or initiating an awareness campaign about the plight of a local waterway, submitting articles to local media on poverty issues, creating video on improving waste disposal in the community and posting it online, or advocating for an awareness campaign on hunger, giving a speech on the topic human rights, and so on are examples.
Research-based: Students gather information from various sources, analyze data, and report on an important topic in order to influence policy or practice. Conducting environmental surveys to influence their school, contributing to a study of animal migration patterns, or compiling the most effective ways to reduce litter in public places are just a few examples.
The aims of the Community Project as given in the IB MYP Projects guide are:
• To participate in a sustained, self-directed inquiry within a global context.
• Generate creative new insights and develop deeper understandings through in-depth investigation.
• Demonstrate the skills, attitudes and knowledge required to complete a project over an extended period of time.
• Communicate effectively in a variety of situations.
• Demonstrate responsible action through, or as a result of, learning.
• Appreciate the process of learning and take pride in their accomplishment