Global Citizenship and Sustainability is a class taught by David Murphy where students develop projects that impact the world in a positive way. 

This course started two years ago as a project-based class that consists of creating sustainable projects, concluding in a worldwide competition that decides which is the most sustainable project. Projects began at the start of the school year and were submitted for review by May 1. 

“Being aware of the sustainable development goals that are universal and worldwide are super important because it is the systems we use and can apply to our community,” Murphy said.

The main goal of the projects is to focus on Sustainable Development goals that were created by the United Nations, this method is used to create different alternatives to help the world. Students had to create a project based on the chosen SDGs to make a self-sustainable change. 

“There is a lot of potential in the students working right now on their projects. The hope is that these projects become self-sustainable, we don’t need to be there every time but they can continue to grow even without us,” Murphy said.

Carlota Montoya, Emilio Gonzalez, Sofia Arango, Camila Ramirez, and Nikolai Sankovich created a project called Food for All that had a goal of gathering food that was going to be thrown away from restaurants all over Medellín. 

“Our goal was to connect restaurants with foundations. After ending the project this week we realized this could be very sustainable because the foundation we worked with already had all the contacts of the restaurants, so they can have a viable way to have food,” Montoya said.

Camilo Correa, Tomas Galeano, Gustavo Borques, Emilio Uribe, and Miguel Romero students created a project named Residue Consumers which designed a prototype that helped people learn the importance of managing garbage, it was an automatic lid that helps sort organics from recycling. After a rough start, they were able to propose the idea to the school.

“Our project was something viable but it was very difficult to program and build since the materials did not arrive on time. The prototype was aimed at the school and the idea was to try to help the environment and to make people realize the situation,” Galeano said.

Ambar Álvarez, Valentina Betancur, Martina Piedrahita, Pablo Londoño and Matias Isaza that started in December 2021. In collaboration with  “Super Héroes por Colombia,” a foundation focused on their soccer team of children from ages 7 to 10 called Dragones FC, where they go to play soccer and do workshops that can help them learn new things for the future such as teamwork.

“Our first purpose was to get the kids in the foundation to have a relationship with us as if we were their older brothers. We realized that we could create this connection by giving them information that can help them in their personal life since many want to be professional athletes,” Álvarez said. 

After 6 months of preparation, going to foundations, working on prototypes, and searching for outstanding opportunities, students completed an individual survey where they provide an essay, an infographic and a video explaining step-by-step the process of their projects including accomplishments, obstacles, and goals reached.

“We register for the competition as a school and each individual team completes a short survey and submits to the competition to finally be accepted. We have made a change, but I feel we can do more. In this school, we have a lot of resources and there are a lot of motivated students that have been able to make a noticeable change,” Murphy said.