Three sixth form students win 2021 COBIS awards
#CARE #EXCELLENCE
19/05/2021
Three Sixth Form students who inspired the JESS community to sew eco-friendly period poverty packs have been awarded Student Achievement Awards by the Council of British Schools (COBIS).
This year, COBIS recognised 250 students from 99 worldwide schools for their outstanding individual achievements and their contributions to an aspect of school or community life.
Anushka received the award for her Commitment to Charity, Aurusha was awarded the Commitment to Community Causes award and Sarah received the Outstanding Effort award. All three students had developed, led and inspired a Period Poverty project that received funding and donations of materials and goods from external companies and inspired a whole community to unite for a common cause.
The three ladies explained why they started this project.
“We were inspired to start this project after seeing the disparity girls faced when dealing with menstruation and how many school days were lost due to lack of sanitary products in disadvantaged areas and communities. Started as a CAS (Creativity, Action and Service) project for the International Baccalaureate Diploma, we set ourselves a goal to create 2,500 sustainable sanitary pads that JESS would deliver to Kenyan orphanages.” explained Sarah.
“What started as a small CAS project, quickly developed into a school-wide initiative where we used the school PHSE days as sewing bees to encourage all our secondary students to get involved and make a contribution to the project,” said Aurusha.
“When COVID hit and school had to close, we adapted and created sewing kits that we distributed to our parents, staff and students which allowed us to hit our 2500 target and truly call this a community project. We couldn’t have achieved our targets without the help from all the JESS community – that’s parents, staff and students,” summarised Anushka.
“These awards are open to all the COBIS schools around the world, so competition is fierce and we are delighted that Sarah, Anushka and Arusha have been recognised for their work to develop the JESS Period Poverty programme and their roles in making this a huge success,” explained Mr Shane O’Brien, Director of JESS.
Here are all the 2021 COBIS student achievement award winners:
