Breaking News: On Friday night, after being ravaged by a series of catastrophic natural disasters, depleting them of vital natural resources, the top government officials of the small islands nations of Kiribati, Fiji and Papa New Guinea urgently banded together to negotiate various new fast acting trade deals between these three stricken countries.
Although only taking place in our College auditorium and in place of government leaders, only our senior students, this activity, as part of Sancta Maria College’s annual Caritas Challenge, provided an insight for students into the plethora of challenges faced by our Pacific neighbours on an annual basis due to natural disasters and climate change, with global warming being our main focus for the night.
Firstly, we were fortunate enough to have one of our teacherers (with her extensive knowledge on the environment), Mrs McCreath, as one of our guest speakers! She was able to educate us on the dangers of using plastic, albeit a ‘recyclable product’, and also the ripple effects of carbon emissions, which causes global warming, which then causes climate change that threatens the future of other humans, of creatures and of our planet as whole.
During the night, we were split into ‘families’ to go on our own journey and face our own challenges. Some of us had to face the dilemma of whether to leave our island to seek refuge on another island, which was threatened with being inundated by the sea, or to take the risk to stay, with the possibility of being rescued at a later time.
Families were forced to leave behind family members and resources, walk in the dark blindly to replicate families travelling through the dark seas, and to transfer fresh water from a bucket to allow their crops to grow efficiently, replicating the hardships of replacing food supplies which have been destroyed by sea water.
We were also made to build our own houses out of cardboard, scissors, tape and our own creativity and ingenuity, which some people slept in during the night. Many people inventively created mail boxes, windows, doors and even chimneys and gardens!
Overall, Caritas Challenge 2017 has been and will forever be, an unforgettable experience for the Year 12s and 13s who participated. Many enjoyable memories were made and so many lessons have been learnt that have allowed us to understand the real and tangible effects of global warming.
However, this night would not have been possible without our Caritas leaders who were able to run it so efficiently, and to the teachers who gave up their Friday night to look after us (and to prank us).
Manvis Wong and Angelika Bilbao
