For Week Without Walls thirteen students from grade 5 to grade 12 visited Omdurman souq where, on day one, they rediscovered traditional medicines, interviewed traders and the ladies who weave baskets. On day two they visited the antique part of the souq and learnt much about the history of Sudan from early Nubian times throughout the colonial era. Students saw woodcarvers in action and talked to locals and traders about Omdurman and life in Sudan. Locals at the souq were excited to see the students and to share their knowledge. It was obvious that the locals are proud of their heritage and happy that the students wanted to learn about Sudan. On day three students made a video to share their experiences with other students and visitors to Ƶ.
For Week Without Walls twelve students from grade 6 to grade 12 visited an orphanage. On day one, the students collected donations from different classes in the school. They sorted out all the collected materials and packed them. They also created their own cards and crafts to give to the children in the orphanage. On day two they visited the orphanage where they played with the children and shared toys with them. One student read a story to the children and the rest played games with them. The students knew more about the children in the orphanage and showed a great sense of empathy. On day three students made a video to share their experiences with other students and visitors to Ƶ.
Several baby tortoises have hatched and a safe space needed to be built for them. A group of students built a large enclosure where these babies will be safe, have enough space and be able to grow to adulthood.
Ƶ planned three days of Week Without Walls that allows for students to be in touch with Sudan, and take on projects that allow students to develop skills such as teamwork, creativity, and planning. During our week without walls, our group E-Payment had the goal of introducing cash cards and a new payment system to our school. Ƶ’s main goal was finding a new, safe, and reliable way to pay for lunches on a daily basis, and hopefully implement a customizable Ƶ cash card that can be used in other stores in Sudan.
The Project Management group worked with Electronic Banking Services (EBS) to teach us more about how the process of using an E-Payment system functions in general. In the first day, EBS gave us a briefing in school and taught us how their system works, and the different possibilities of E-Payment. The following day we went to the Central Bank of Sudan (CBOS) and visited the EBS section. They showed us departments from Support Services to Card Printing and more. This gave us a clear understanding of what is possible to be implemented at Ƶ. Our objective is to have a Point of Sale (POS) in our cafeteria, where we can have several machines that Ƶ students will be using their personal cards to swipe with, or to plug in their numbers to complete the transaction and enjoy a hot meal. Parents can transfer money to students’ cash cards directly from their bank accounts. This can be done through bank transfers, SMS, and a mobile app.
We are hoping that this new system will allow students to be in touch with new technological advancements that are not only modernizing Sudan, but are also prevalent throughout the world. It is very important for students to learn about these new advancements and how to be safe using them, especially seniors leaving for universities where cash cards are the predominant payment system. Teaching the younger students is also important as these new concepts will be used when they get older.
Students plant trees around the Ƶ Campus.
The design
and theme of the mosaic mural covered a lot of aspects like the 4 Cs,
internationalism and, last but not least, our Sudanese peaceful
revolution that we are very much proud of. We are also very
fortunate to have Mr. Abubaker Elsharif, a Sudanese mosaic artist
who helped us make the mural. We learned a lot from his expertise
and we are all very grateful.
Students learn and create Origami projects.
A Facebook post by Byron Román in 2018 challenged the world. He took a photo of a public area covered in trash, and then took another photo after he had finished cleaning it up. Then he issued a challenge to bored teenagers everywhere to do what he had done in their own countries, calling it the ‘#Trashtag Challenge’. For Week Without Walls we took him up on that challenge. We chose two sites to clean. One was located aside the school, and the other one was at a garden in a nearby neighborhood.
The first day we scouted where we were going to go to get a sense of where all the sites were. We also watched videos about how trash harms the environment, and how it also affects animals. The second day we cleaned the first site, the site beside the school. We cleaned the whole place step-by-step. People even stopped by and said we are doing really good for the neighborhood. There were so many obstacles in our way, such as the heat from the sun, but we stuck together to finish cleaning all of it. In the end we cleaned about 11 bags of trash, which is a lot!
The third day we went to a neighborhood garden that took thirty minutes to walk to. The trash in the garden was mostly bottle caps, but there was also plastic bags, straws, old clothes, cardboard boxes, etc. It took us about two and a half hours to gather up all the trash, which amounted to about three bags’ worth. During the cleanup we took before and after pictures that we could put on social media. The whole thing was a unique experience for us because we all stepped into the shoes of the people who cleanup Khartoum’s trash.
Comments by the Ƶ Trash Pickers:
“I learned to never give up on saving the environment. Plus, I liked that my friends helped me, and I helped them too. The hard part was that we had to work a long time without resting.” – Murad Ali, grade 5
“I learned that cleaning up the environment helps the world. The thing I did not like was that it was so hot that we drank all of our water. The best thing was that our cleanup will help marine animals.” – Stefan Gindi, grade 5
