The beauty of the IBDP CAS it's all in the Bag!

The beauty of the IBDP CAS Projects (Creativity, Action, and Service) is that it gets students active in their advocacy initiatives, be it creative, or of service to the community. Some of our students, Meera Bheenick, Hiba Fattel, and Zeynep Kunt have taken on a CAS Project to ban single-use plastics on our campus!

Involving surrounding communities, these students have been in touch with a NAWA Member, Soni Valecha who upcycles used cloth to make shopping bags, which is apt considering that one of the highest distributions of single-use plastic is through plastic shopping bag. Soni started this initiative a year ago with the initial goal to make 1000 bags, and so far she has made 500 bags with the total cost per bag being 2 GHC.

NAWA's long term goal is that Ghana will follow suit along with the 40 other countries in the world to ban plastics, but till then, there are consistent efforts being put in increasing awareness at the grassroots level. By donating a bag to each of the members of these communities, and having pop-ups where Soni is able to sell about 80 to 100 bags, the message is slowly reaching out. Recently, they have also been introduced to the Millenium Excellence Foundation and local advocates at Abeka which has garnered a favorable amount of attention.

Now ARIS is aiming to take it on after the interview with Soni. By starting to speak about it and gather donations of used clothes, there could even be enough to make about 10000 bags. With social media awareness on the rapid rise, our savvy youngsters could also assist in setting up and managing active social media pages. According to Soni, this is not a "fundraising effort but an awareness drive".