From the IB Community Blog
It is coming up to 4 years since I completed my IB Diploma and despite bemoaning the Creativity, Activity, Service (CAS) evaluations
back in 2012, I am now relishing the chance to engage in a bit of
self-reflection. CAS documentation seemed so unnecessary, frivolous in
among the six other subjects, Theory of Knowledge course and Extended
Essay that we were busy writing. But now they’re completed, I’m really
beginning to appreciate those evaluations, the CAS element as a whole,
and especially the Service element, as an important part of where I am
today and what I’ll do in the future.
"...It was for a CAS project that I travelled to Austria, helping out at a youth organization’s annual summer camp. Improving my ability to speak German was a happy by-product of my week there. Reflecting now, the experience helped me get the position I am in today, on a European Voluntary Service (EVS) placement working with their international umbrella organization, the International Falcon Movement – Socialist Educational International (IFM-SEI).
Rather than following the paths of my fellow graduates into ‘ordinary’ jobs and prestigious graduate schemes, I’m on a different type of scheme with a different type of prestige. I am working in Brussels with an amazing children’s rights movement of youth organizations doing things I would never have thought I would, from helping to plan an international camp for 3,000 young people, to organizing seminars and putting together educational publications.
The EVS scheme, which facilitates international exchanges across Europe and beyond in a well-structured, well-funded arrangement that also places emphasis on the volunteers’ training, personal development and language-acquisition, is 20 this year. My fellow EVSers in Flanders, aged 17 – 30, from Italy to India, are on placements as varied as a community farm, circus school, disability rights organization and women’s refuge. Making friends with people from all over the world, I have enjoyed exchanging cultural nuances, whilst also recognising similarities, and the offer to go and visit Brazil some time is not to be sniffed at either...."
CAS, self-reflection and being a lifelong volunteer
"...It was for a CAS project that I travelled to Austria, helping out at a youth organization’s annual summer camp. Improving my ability to speak German was a happy by-product of my week there. Reflecting now, the experience helped me get the position I am in today, on a European Voluntary Service (EVS) placement working with their international umbrella organization, the International Falcon Movement – Socialist Educational International (IFM-SEI).
Rather than following the paths of my fellow graduates into ‘ordinary’ jobs and prestigious graduate schemes, I’m on a different type of scheme with a different type of prestige. I am working in Brussels with an amazing children’s rights movement of youth organizations doing things I would never have thought I would, from helping to plan an international camp for 3,000 young people, to organizing seminars and putting together educational publications.
The EVS scheme, which facilitates international exchanges across Europe and beyond in a well-structured, well-funded arrangement that also places emphasis on the volunteers’ training, personal development and language-acquisition, is 20 this year. My fellow EVSers in Flanders, aged 17 – 30, from Italy to India, are on placements as varied as a community farm, circus school, disability rights organization and women’s refuge. Making friends with people from all over the world, I have enjoyed exchanging cultural nuances, whilst also recognising similarities, and the offer to go and visit Brazil some time is not to be sniffed at either...."
