AMID 16,000 enthusiastic young people from around the province, over 40 Mulgrave students attended last month's Vancouver We Day at Roger's Arena.
With influential speakers such as Mikhail Gorbachev and Mia Farrow, We Day celebrated the positive actions of young people, urging them to make a difference in their communities and around the world.
According to Mulgrave Grade 11 student Jasmine Somani, "We Day 2011 was an amazing, inspirational and fun-filled experience. Our students in Grades 7-12 learned more about what is going on in the world and how we can help change it. It was exciting to be around so many students from all over the province, all inspired, eager and passionate to make the world a better place."
Somani and two other students have now organized a We to Me school club at Mulgrave. The club is set to organize events in conjunction with Free the Children initiatives worldwide and will be a natural extension of organized trips set to depart to Kenya, China and Costa Rica later this year. "We forward to upcoming initiatives that will get Mulgrave engaged to 'be the change' of we want to see in the world," said Somani. The trips, part of the Global Education and Outreach program at Mulgrave, will provide the opportunity for students to volunteer their time further to the organization. Somani hopes to go to Kenya next July.
The focus of We Day is natural extension of Mulgrave's International Baccalaureate (IB) academic program and hits the very core of the school's values. Mulgrave is a co-ed, nondenominational, Pre-K to Grade 12 school in West Vancouver. In many ways, the IB provides the school with an academic framework that extends beyond the classroom walls to a worldwide arena, where being a responsible global citizen is at the centre of the school's culture.
Global Education and Outreach is just one of the four strands of a Mulgrave education. Arts, athletics and, most importantly, academics round out the others. Universities worldwide often prefer IB graduates, which is why graduates from Mulgrave have opportunities to select from a multitude of colleges worldwide. Year after year, the school's graduates have been successful in admission to their universities of choice, in Canada, the US and abroad.
By inspiring excellence in education and life today, Mulgrave provides a community where students have opportunities to develop lifelong learning skills, in an environment where individual values are based on personal integrity and acting with respect towards others. Indeed, to use Jasmine's words, engaging students to "be the change we want to see in the world."
