A large part of the Global Scholars program is participating in lessons and activities that surround one of the UN Global Goals. These activities take place in school during Hblocks and each year scholars go off campus to participate in a Summit where they spend the whole day learning about global issues and topics and complete activities that relate to the theme.
During my years as a global scholar, I have participated in two global summits. The first one in 2022 and the second one in 2024. Each of these summits focused on one or two global goals and we listened to speakers, went on adventures, and completed activities that related to that year's topic.
This summit was held on Friday, April 29th at The Andover Cormier Youth Center. This year's theme was "Preserving Language and Culture".
After the initial icebreaker activity in the gymnasium, we moved into a series of stations. I traveled through the stations with a group of kids in my class of 2024 cohort. We started at the lei-making station. The Global Scholars who traveled on the Rustic Pathways trip to Hawaii a few months prior in February taught us how to make our own leis. They also shared stories from their trip to Hawaii and taught us about the culture and service that they completed. After we made out leis we moved over to the henna station. We had a great time experimenting with the henna and creating our designs, I made a flower on my hand! As our design dried we took up the opportunity to speak with a Portal connection in Rwanda about the importance of cultural traditions. The technology that the Portal uses is so cool. A group enters an inflatable room that has a screen in which the speaker is displayed. The experience is similar to a face time but allows you to talk with people all around the world.
This year's Summit was Wednesday, April 3rd, at Andover's Old Town Hall downtown. The theme for this year was "Life Underwater and Life on Land".
We started with some icebreakers to get the group warmed up and then we broke into groups. First, we got some fun sea creature hats which we kept on for the majority of the day. my group and I started by helping to prep the sushi-making station for later. Then we moved into helping to color some sea creature artwork. Once we were satisfied with the drawing we moved to a paper-making station which was inspired by the scholars who traveled to Thailand over February break. I never thought I would be able to make my own paper out of recycled paper, it was fascinating learning about the process and then being able to do it myself! Circling back to the sushi we prepared earlier, the group and I began to make our very own sushi. It was so much fun being able to learn about different types of sushi and how it's made! We then left the town hall and explored downtown while completing a scavenger hunt. After a break for lunch, we listened to a speaker who discussed animals and how they related to the theme of the summit.
This was one of the first enrichment opportunities that I completed sophomore year and we made guacamole with a chef from Latin America. It was so much fun learning about the culture that surrounds guacamole and being able to make my own in school! It was also pretty sweet because we could eat it too!
For this activity we painted mugs that were donated by faculty and other students and we made them look nicer so that we could fill them with goodies and sell them as gifts!
In December is the winter solstice which is the one day out of the year with the least amount of daylight. It is common to light candles and luminaries on this day to brighten up such a dark day. For this activity, we decorated paper bags which would be turned into luminaries and dipped candles!
Each year the town of Andover has a scarecrow festival where local groups and organizations will build a scarecrow that embodies what they believe in. Global Pathways has a scarecrow every year and it is up to the global scholars to design and make the scarecrow each year. I had helped with this process twice and its always so much fun. I love seeing the scarecrow that i helped build displayed in the town center for everyone to see!