[IB9 & IB10] A traditional Food Bank activity for the DG IB students - 2015 Spring

Ksenija Smirnova -

Food bank is a charitable activity that was first established in US in 1967.  In Europe, it has been gaining in popularity since 2006. Therefore, Food bank is a well-known and significant project all over the world with Lithuania being no exception. This organization collects and stores the donated food and sends it to homeless shelters, orphanages and other places, where people are in need. Parents, who are not able to feed their children, can turn to Food bank organizations to request for assistance, especially under circumstances of unemployment and disabilities that prevents individuals to secure sufficient income to feed the families. In Lithuania people can leave a small amount of money using special donation boxes in 214 stores all over the country. According to statistics in 2010 people had donated 33 000 Euros.

Our school also takes part in Food bank. Basically, participants of this project are International Baccalaureate students. Classes are divided into small groups of students (usually 2-3 people) who are allocated a certain time to volunteer. Last time we have volunteered in March. Although for most IB1’s students it was the second time volunteering in supermarkets for Food bank, while for IB2’s it was their fourth time. As usual DG IB students felt grateful for being a part of something special and being able to directly help the organizers to efficiently make arrangements. Having talked to my classmates we all agreed upon participating in organizing Food Bank in the future as soon as there would be a possibility for that.

Personally to me, Food bank gives an opportunity to help people in need. Furthermore, I can volunteer, meet new people, collaborate and spend time with my classmates. Food bank made me see that a lot of people are ready to help the poor. However, I have some communication problems due to language barrier, because I am from Latvia and I do not speak Lithuanian, yet through volunteering opportunities like this I am able to work on improving my communication skills.  

In conclusion, I can say that these kinds of projects should be developed in all countries, because each country has people that need help and those are able to help. Food bank involves us into solving or at least helping to solve a global issue of poverty. Food bank unites people. Food bank is turning to other people to open their hearts.

An IB1(on the left) and an IB2(on the right) students collaborating together to hand out the Food Bank leaflets

An IB1(on the left) and an IB2(on the right) students collaborating together to invite people to donate the food to the Food Bank charity

[IB10] A midwinter hike to Kurtuvėnai Regional Park

Paulius Grimalis - 

Each year on the 25th of January a midwinter hike is organised by the “Aukuras club”. This is a hike in which people get together and walk around the Kurtuvėnai regional park. The aim of this hike is to celebrate the midwinter’s day - a day when there’s only half of winter left till spring. This year eight students from the IB1 class with their teacher Ligita participated in this hike on Sunday. All the participants gathered at 11 o’clock a few meters away from the Geluvos lake. Right after hearing the instructions we began our journey.

Firstly, we headed to see the lakes. One of them almost cracked and scared us a lot. Fortunately nobody got wet and we continued our hike. During the hike the leader of the group showed the group a badger. This was not an ordinary badger. There’s a myth, each midwinter that badger gets out of its cave. If he leaves a lot of footprints around his cave, then this winter will be short. On the other hand, if there are no footprints - the winter will be long. Unfortunately, my classmates and I could not see the cave of the badger because of the amount of people standing around its’ cave. Thus we cannot tell you guys the predictions of this winter. Then we visited the biggest oak in the whole Kurtuvėnai regional park which is called Zuikiškės oak. It is 32m high and the diameter of its trunk is 1.5m.  It made us realise how small we are in this world. Lastly, we managed to visit even 10 lakes that are situated in the Kurtuvėnai regional park (Geluvos, Šermukšnyno, Raudoniuko, Barsukyno, Dubuko, Širvos, Butiškės, Bijotės, Juodežerio and Niaukos lakes).

This journey took us approximately 5 hours to finish but the hike was worth every minute. This was a really interesting and challenging hike as we had to walk a long distance in order to see these beautiful nature creations. Fresh air, great people made this event even better. So without a doubt I recommend everyone to participate in this hike next year!

A group photo during the hike

Happy and tired faces of IB1s after having completed the hike

[IB10] Business simulation in Didzdvaris Gymnasium

Ieva Poškutė - 

This school year IB2 student Ieva Poskute became the ambassador of ISM University at our school. One of the tasks as an ambassador was to organize an event related to the university, in this case - a business simulator.

The aim of a business simulator is to help to understand the main principles of the business world. It helps to experience how the market works, one learns to analyze the situation and make fast and relevant decisions in a team. These kinds of simulators are widely used in the university, for students to try the business methods in practice.

This business simulator was in the form of a game. There were six teams participating and each one of them took a random envelope with the equipment they needed for the task. There were three types of envelopes, each representing a type of country: developing, averagely developed or developed. Each envelope had a certain amount of money, paper, scissors, rulers, geometric forms, and pencils. The task of each group was to cut out as many geometric forms as possible from the material given and to sell them to the bank for the highest possible price. The bank was open during the whole simulator and it was changing the prices of the forms depending on the amount of them already bought from the groups.

The simulator ended when the bank had closed and the group of participants, who earned the highest profit, were awarded with books given by the university, which were about business and leadership.

The participants said they liked the event, that it was fun and that they would like to participate in a similar event again. Due to the success of the simulator there might be more events of this kind at our school in the future.

Simulation in action

Winners enjoying their prizes