ISM News – 28 June 2019

Dear Students, Parents, Staff and Friends,

Thank you for another wonderful year. It is in some ways terrifying how quickly the year has passed, but we can also look back with pride at all that has been achieved. Whilst excited that the school will be opening as UWC East Africa in August, there is still a lot of work to do in preparation. Whilst the students and teachers have now left for a well-earned break, the school does not stop. When they return, it will be to a school that (on the outside) may look a little different but the excellent teaching and learning which has been a mark of ISM for the past 50 years will remain. The end of the academic year is always tinged with sadness as we say goodbye to friends and colleagues, but we are excited that we will be welcoming new students, new teachers and new parents very soon.

50 years and becoming UWC East Africa

Our Alumni from around the world will meet in Moshi to celebrate 50 years of ISM. The Alumni Reunion Weekend will be from 25-28th July, with a live performance by Mzungu Kichaa on Friday 26 that is open to the whole community.

Please keep your calendars free on Friday 25th and Saturday 26th October. This is when we will be celebrating the school’s 50th birthday and our official opening as UWC East Africa. I am both honoured and delighted that Her Majesty Queen Noor of Jordan, UWC president, will be celebrating with us.

Host families

As we look forward to welcoming many new students next year, we are also conscious that some of these students will not be returning home every vacation. A host family is a member of the school community who resides in Tanzania and is able to open their home (at weekends, in the vacations or for occasional meals) to one or more of these students. Host families become their second families and often provide the much-needed respite these students need. Please contact me if you would like to know more about becoming a host family.

New website and email addresses

As part of our preparations for the new year, we are changing our website and email addresses. Our website address will be www.uwcea.org and we will have common email addresses across the school. Email address for staff members will take the format: firstnamelastname@uwcea.org. For example my address will be annamarsden@uwcea.org.

In October 2018, the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, IPCC, warned that the world has twelve years to keep global warming to a maximum of 1.5C. They predicted that an increase of even half a degree greater than this will increase the risks of drought, floods, extreme heat and associated poverty for hundreds of millions of people. The World Wildlife Fund talks of the current biodiversity extinction crisis as the sixth mass-extinction event and attributes it entirely to human activity. Friends of the Earth tells us how plastic is found in the food chain, on the summits of mountains and in the deepest oceans. Furthermore, predictions are that this plastic is going to be with us for many hundreds of years. Recently, Greta Thunberg has shown what one person can do to increase awareness and got the world talking. She has shown that an individual’s voice is powerful and individual action can have a global effect. What therefore can the thousand students, staff and parents do?

Summit 2019

This year the school has decided to no longer print a copy of The Summit for every member of our community. Should you want a printed copy, please contact mwegelokapinga@ed.ismoshi.com. Alternatively, please find the link to your electronic Summit here.

Single-use plastic

Both campuses are working hard to remove single-use plastic from our school. Please use refillable water bottles and re-useable containers. Plastic shopping bags are already banned in Tanzania, we ask that all member of our community also stops buying the single-use, plastic bottles of soda or water.

Glass bottles

The new student residence on Arusha campus is building some walls from old glass bottles. Thank you for the wine and spirit bottles that have already been recycled, we need many more. Please continue to bring your bottles to the school offices (on Arusha and Moshi campuses) and we will make sure they get to the site.

It is vitally important that as we look forward to the future we also honour the past. In Moshi, students decided to make a Hall of Memories and they are collecting photographs of the school and its students from years gone by. Please send scanned copies of any photographs you might have to mwegelokapinga@ed.ismoshi.com so these may be added to the wall.

I thank you all for support this year, and I look forward to seeing many of you again in August.

Anna Marsden