Clothing Donations at ISKL

Melawati bin: inside Exit 6 adjacent to the field

Ampang bin: Front Parking Lot

For years we've been trying to determine the best way forward for end-of-use clothing. For the past few months a number of concerned parents, our Director of Development Mr. Charles Davis and our Sustainability & Service Learning Coordinator Mr. Laurence Myers have been working on finding an on-campus solution for those families looking for a place to discard or donate clothing. 

With Earth Week just a week or so away (April 16-23) one great idea is to support the Green Council's clothing drive on the Ampang campus. The clothing donated to this initiative will be given to the Chin Students Association for the children there. The Red Hats are also rumored to be organizing a clothing drive at Melawati as well.  Then there is the ever-popular uniform swap organized by 5BW. 

For those unable to donate during Earth Week, however, we have started up a new partnership with an company named Life Line Clothing. Though they donate some clothing to charity, the majority of their work utilizes the cloth either as is or by making into other clothing items, depending on the quality of the product. Their work revolves around providing clothing to low-income markets. A portion of their proceeds go to three charitable organizations in KL. 

At ISKL we have placed two large donation bins at the following locations (pictured):

• Ampang: At the end of the Ampang front parking lot (next to the recycling tent) 
• Melawati: Inside the entrance of the bussing lane (exit 6) in the parking lot area adjacent to the field. 

Please feel free to support this program if you have uniforms with the ISKL logo or any clothing which you are comfortable donating. 

We hope that this will provide our community an avenue to donate their clothing either for the benefit of our community (as in the clothing swap), local community organizations (such as the Green Council or Red Hats initiatives) or for on-going support in regions where affordable clothing is necessary. 

Thank you for your continued support of sustainable practices and keeping useful things from the landfill. 

The Ecology of a New Campus

 

A few weeks ago Dr. Hudson announced that clearance and demolition work on the new campus site at Ampang Hilir is already underway. The new campus will feature 25.7 acres of purpose-built campus that will be a beacon for quality international education. It will be not just a school, but also a shining example of sustainable practices in energy, water and resource use. The campus is being designed with Malaysia’s Green Building Index (GBI) Platinum rating in mind. From an “exceptional education meets sustainable design” standpoint it is exactly where want to be in the coming years if we’re building a future based on responsible global citizenship. 
But such developments, no matter how visionary, do not come without cost. One such cost is that of the natural assets that currently exist on the site that, understandably, need to be demolished so that the new campus can be built. There are approximately 250 mature trees existing on the site. There are also numerous small homes and their corresponding garden spaces along with the animals that find refuge and food there. So how does a school with a sustainable consciousness co-exist with the fact that nature will be impacted for our school’s expansion? 
To address that, we have several simultaneous conversations going on that will, hopefully soon, become reality. A survey of the new campus space has identified seven frangipani trees that will be removed, maintained and then replanted onto the new campus. Mr. David Perrau, the Director of Project Operations, indicates that 14 trees will be re-purposed on our new campus by turning them into sculptures and or utilitarian elements (e.g. tables). This use of place-based resources will be augmented by the use of bricks of present homes that can be utilized to highlight aesthetic appeal of the new campus and reduce waste. Beyond that we are currently in conversations with the Global Environment Centre, a reputable NGO, to create an “adopt an acre” type program that will replant a substantial number of trees over a five-year period in an area of high ecological importance. ISKL has participated in tree plantings at The Raja Musa Peat Forest over the years but the partnership currently in process would be larger in scope. It will take a while for our planting to reach the carbon sink capacity of the mature trees on the campus, but planting that many trees at the Raja Musa Peat Forest would allow for an expansion of land that has major ecological benefit, from acting as a water sink for KL and providing a home for many species or animals and plants. 
Once our new campus opens the ISKL community will, no doubt, feel its pulse and recognize the sustainable nature of its design and function. It will serve as an example of the interaction of building space and learning experiences and will feature things such as solar energy, recycling, composting, reuse of water, cooling slabs, passive light maximization and green spaces for study, observation and appreciation. We envision a harmony of building, learning and sustainable design. We expect students to partake in behaviors that, supported by design, will limit the impact on the ecology of the space while simultaneously forming an excellent resource for integrated study. But we will also have a new school “forest” where students can study how it grows, how it works and an example of how schools can change the world. With good planning - which has characterised everything about our new campus - the relationship between the history of our school and the regeneration of natural ecosystems could be the perfect fit. And who knows? Hopefully, with the passage of time, those trees (and any trees planted after that) will grow large enough to be of greater carbon benefit than even the beautiful space we will soon call home.

The Numbers and the Heart: 2014-15 Wind Down

Those fortunate enough to be at graduation last week will have listened to the excellent graduation speech by Michael Ortiz, a HS math teacher (who will serve as IB Coordinator next year), who focused on the "hidden curriculum" of what really matters in growing and learning. His point, regarding how much that matters is not often documented is an ever-present one. Like most things both education and life can only be 'defined' in part with numbers and data and the like. Much of it, though, lies in less-definable elements such as the heart, disposition, growth, where evidence can be much different. So too, is the case with ISKL's sustainability and service culture. 

The numbers will say this:

Indicator	Ampang	Melawati	Change from 13-14 (Total Amounts)
Water (m3) *	+ 0.5% (12,519 m3)	-37.8% (11,763 m3)	-21.7% (24,282 m3)
Electricity (kWh) *	+ 3.9 % (2,158,352 kWh)	- 8.0 % (984,657 kWh)	+1.6% (3,143,009kWh)
Paper (# of copies/prints) *	-0.6% (2,272,284)	-15.5% (689,050)	-4.5% (2,961,334)
Carbon emissions from ISKL flights (tonnes of CO2)			- 16.0% (1200 tonnes)
Recycling (kg)			+3.5% (11,027 kg)
Composting (kg - estimated)			+14.6% (17,045 kg)

They will say that, overall, ISKL has done a reasonably good job in moving toward being a more sustainable school. They will say that Melawati fared better than Ampang in that regard. They will also tell us that we recycled more, we composted more, we used less water (and fixed some leeks). But they won't talk about the heart, the disposition or the growth of our students. 

For that one needs to speak to children and ask them what they've learned. One has to see what they've accomplished. To recognize that during the course of the past two years over 100 service related initiatives have been taken on. Students have assisted with relief efforts in disaster affected areas and/or difficult political circumstances. In the process our students have learned about the challenges of being change makers. They have worked with communities in numerous less-developed areas and, in doing so, recognized how much "stuff" they have in comparison to others, but also that material things matter less in different circumstances that they might have originally thought. They have provided support in building homes for those who cannot build their own and recognized what is truly important in shelter, family and community. They have assisted with refugees and learned that the world is not always easy for people who have done no wrong. They have worked on bringing back the environment and realized how difficult it is to do so when monetary priorities imply that nature is less beneficial to an economy and, by extension, to a society. And yet, despite these seemingly massive obstacles, they still work and plant and teach and build. 

These are the "unwritten" learnings that our environmental indicator data cannot reveal and are hard to gauge. But they are there and they are necessary. For if we want out children to grow and be empowered to make the world a better place, to be the global citizens we want them to be, then all these things - the data and the learning - are important to set the course to a more sustainable present, and future. 

What a wonderful year it's been!  Our children are one year older, and wiser still. They are more capable of making change and, as the Melawati Way puts it, ".. taking care of each other and taking care of this place". Have an enjoyable summer, everyone!

Never Too Young to Make Positive Change

It was a Wednesday morning when my daughter, in grade 1, said to me, "daddy, we wrote a letter to Mr. Busk about trees". Not sure what it was about I smiled supportively but then we rushed to get on the bus. By the time I got to school that same day I had received an email from Mr. Busk. The subject line read "trees". So I meandered my way down the Melawati hallway to find him and get the scoop. What he told me was quite impressive!

A few trees have been either removed or have fallen at the Melawati playground over the past few months. This, as it turns out, was noticed by our little grade 1 students who, in turn, went to their teacher to discuss their problem... too much sun and too hot a play space. What ensued was practically a play-by-play of service learning. The students went to the playground and measured the temperature to determine how hot it really was. They surveyed their entire class and found that over 95% of the class supported the idea of planting new trees. They created a map of the playground with notations of where they felt it was best to plant them. Then they wrote letters.

At first they wrote three letters, one each. Then, recognizing the power of numbers, they decided to "pitch" the idea of advocacy onto their classmates. That resulted in about 12 more letters being written, which prompted one to think that perhaps it would be so much better to have the whole grade write letters. So, the three students stood up and presented to their entire grade of peers, sharing their thoughts and data and inviting over to write letters as well. By the time Mr. Busk was involved over 80 letters were handed over to him along with the data and results of the surveys. 

Mr. Busk invited Mr. Myers to walk around the playground about how wonderful it might be to add some trees to the playground, in part to make up for tree lost, but also perhaps to address the 'plastification' of our play areas on the lower ES play areas. Mr. Myers then contacted the campus supervisor and a local nursery to identify trees that are big enough to provide shade, don't create root problems, and are endemic. The students will later be involved in determining which tree species they would like planted as well as help out with the planting themselves. We hope that by Earth Week (April 18-26) we will be able to place a few trees in that area for the benefit of our children and the environment. For practical reasons it'll probably be a few less than the original 80 trees requested. :-)

How wonderful to know that determined citizens, no matter how young, can make positive change in their community. From a learning standpoint one need not take too long to recognize the knowledge and skill related connections offered through this spontaneous service learning experience (thank you to grade 1 teachers for supporting the enthusiasm!). From a 'bigger picture' perspective it is simply awesome! Are these not the citizens we like to see in our community and in the world?

Real Life Collaboration

Ever since ISKL became Malaysia's first green flag school we have been in a bit of limelight, so to speak in the world of sustainability and environmental education. Certainly it has thrust us into the view of many schools - both internationally and locally - who are paying close attention to what we do. It's a great feeling that we can be proud of all we have accomplished to date. But there is little time to sit on one's laurels. There's work to be done. Collaborative action planning, to be exact. 

This past Wednesday our Green Council played host to the Green Club from SriKDU. It was a very productive few hours with a variety of activities facilitiated by our Green Council members and Sustainability Coordinator. Our visitors received an "eco highlight tour" of our Ampang campus and were duly impressed. They also had time to work closely with our Green Council members addressing issues in our schools and brainstorming ideas on how to address them. Leverage points were identified and action plans were initiated.

On Saturday this type of collaboration will extend even further. Our Green Council will host it's 2nd Eco-Schools Mini Conference. The event will include the participation of SK TUDM Subang, Sri KDU, Alice Smith, SMK Damansara Damai, SMK Bukit Indah Ampang, a few independent members of our community and a local community organization called EcoCentric Transitions. It is poised to be a powerful, authentic, collaborative experience for all and we hope to challenge the global issues that are faced by our schools on the local level. 

It is such authentic and real collaboration that allow our students to truly become global citizens. There is power in such out-of-school collaboration across cultures, educational systems and perceptions. It's just another glimpse of the exceptional education that we provide at ISKL and a true testament to all the students and adults - in all the schools - who are involved in building a bright future.

Sustainability "by the numbers"

ISKL's sustainability initiatives are many and varied and are often publicized as they involve the essence of our being: Our students. What is perhaps less publicized (though the data is available on the Sustainable ISKL website) is the environmental indicator data that we use to inform decisions going forward from a structural standpoint. The latest data, from last semester, reveals the following:

• Through January 2015 we have used the 2,100,000 kWh of energy on our two campuses for this academic year. This is nearly identical to last year's energy use (59% of last year's total with 58% of the year metered).
• December 2014 we have used 1.916,000 sheets of paper on our two campuses for this academic year (49% of last year with 50% of the year metered).
• Through January 2015 we have used the 16,100 m3 of water on our two campuses for this academic year. For Ampang this includes a large increase (68% of last year's total with 50% of the year metered)

A quick check on the EPA carbon equivalencies calculator (here) will indicate that our school's energy use for this time period generates carbon emissions equivalent to 519 tons of landfill waste and would need 37,130 seedlings grown for 10 years to sequester the same amount of carbon. 

Those might seem like high numbers, but they are part of a downward trend . Since 2009, when our environmental indicators started being tracked (somewhat unofficially), our water and paper use have come down by close to 30%. Energy has been rather consistent but this too is viewed as a success given that our school population has increased markedly (along with programs) in that time and we have increased our reliance on and use of technology. 

But, as with any change, the easier adjustments have been made and we are coming to the proverbial plateau.  As the light at the end of our new campus tunnel starts to shine a bit brighter it is a good time to recognize the collective power of design, technology and human behavior and make the necessary adjustments for a more efficient future. 

What is perhaps more exciting is the involvement of our students in the analysis of data, future projections and the offering of a plethora of possibilities. Students. Data. Facilities. Community. Interacting for a future we all want.  

Putting the "Eco" in School

It's not often the breeze picks up so it's perhaps a bit hard to recognize the green flag that sits along side our school flag on each campus. It's our "Eco-Schools" green flag. When it waves it's a clear sign that we do much at ISKL to study, appreciate and support local efforts at sustainable development. 

Thankfully our campus involvement and learning is much more steady than the wind so it's only a matter of looking around to see learning taking place. This week alone a number of classes participated in various activities intended to foster the understanding of sustainability in a local context. 

The grade 6 service learning classes are busily working on action related to global issues. One class has identified the issues or water and health in the context of the flooding on Malaysia's east coast. Their goal is to engage the MS community in supporting the flood victims, and especially children. The other class is focusing on the health issues related to mosquito borne illness, namely dengue. 

Grade 7 had a number of visiting experts on Wednesday in what will hopefully become an annual affair: The grade 7 Ecology Symposium. Speakers will be visiting (and on Skype) and not only presenting what they and their organization do but also asking students to participate in role playing as if they are the speaker in action. Analysis of appropriate decisions is a powerful result of this, increasing learning a good deal. 

Finally, our grade 3 classes completed their "tree planting" project. Since November they have measured the space left open by the reconstruction of a new wall and studied plant species appropriate for the space. On Monday they planted 24 plants which, with some on-going love, attention and water, we hope will adorn the campus for many years to come. 

It's wonderful to see children understanding, connecting dots and growing in such meaningful ways. Whether the wind has picked up or not, whether the flag is waving or still, our students are true Eco-Schools exemplars in action!

Little Steps: Solar at Ampang

There's a Chinese proverb that says that a journey of 1,000 miles begins with a single step. In it's essence this statement recognizes that even in enormous tasks the journey is often in small increments but purposeful. This is often how sustainability seeps into our school culture as well. 

Case in point: How many of you have, as you arrived at the Ampang campus, noticed the new solar panel that sits atop the guard house?  Have your children told you about the four new fans that are now placed there for their convenience as they wait for a ride in the afternoon?  Do they know that a small plug is now available for charging their phones/computers?  

The project - entirely "off grid" was made possible through an Annual Fund donation last year and was put into place as our first school days of the year were underway.  It also charges battery with enough energy to last for over five hours over the course of the night and, of course, during daylight as well.  

The project serves the purpose of intertwining the physical campus with the learning of our students, and providing an example of the use of alternative energy including its benefits and, of course, challenges. Already the structure is being studied by a group of IB students for their group four projects. 

So, whether you notice those types of things or not, little changes are being made to our campus due to the support and engagement of our community. It's the little steps that, added together, build on a journey well beyond 1,000 miles.

Before we go... we're planning for next year.

Every day that passes one can hear the buzz in the hallways. It's the anticipation of a long vacation with little interruption and less worry about formal learning. Next week will bring with it a sudden quiet to the place. The first people, undoubtedly, will be getting ready to head home within hours of that final bell.  But work here continues over the summer.

From a sustainable front we are happy to know that a new off-grid solar powered set of fans (and charging plug) - financed by our Annual Fund donors - will be set up at the front of our campus. Both practical and educational the station should be ready to go when we all return from the summer. 

The hydroponics garden too, which was recently constructed by our Green Council, is slated to get a bit of a "fix up" with the installation of a water catchment area as well as some minor adjustments to the system, including the expansion of the spaces available for the plants to grow. By the time we return in August we hope to have a system that will be bearing fruit (or vegetables, actually) including lettuce for our cafeteria and act as an example for vertical gardens which was, after all, the intent of the Green Council's initiative. 

We will also be organizing early-August training for our Green Council to make sure that 2014-15 starts off right out of the starting blocks. The JUMP Foundation is coming in the very first weekend of school (August 8-9) to conduct leadership, action planning and facilitation training for out 15 Green Council executive members. We are aiming high for this group and hope to ensure that they have all the tools to do a great job next academic year through empowerment, skill building and reflection. It's the kind of capacity building that makes a big difference. 

So, while we are all roaming about and visiting family and friends, it's good to know that ISKL continues to establish both physical and human capacity. Have a wonderful final week!

Real World Green Thinking

By the time Earth Week concludes on Friday, it will have included a compilation of nearly 20 different events from nature outings to sustainable initiatives, from awareness projects to academic outcomes. It will also have highlighted two speakers who were powerful in their message:  Green isn't about tomorrow. It's about today and the "real world" is already moving in that direction. 

Ruben Cortes representing an organization named Earthship Malaysia spoke last week to our MS students before they departed for Malaysia Week. His speech, lauded by everyone in attendance, was about building housing in such a way as to minimize energy and water use while using locally-sourced recycled materials. His participation in the Earthshop program recently took him to the Philippines where the Earthshop crew helped build a community center in a small village that was decimated by Typhoon Hainan.  The simplicity or the architecture was impressive and left a theatre full of middle schoolers and their teachers in awe of such possibilities. His point was simple: Sustainable building practices are "here and now" not tomorrow or the future. 

CK Tang, of Veritas Environment, who is involved in the planning of our new ISKL campus spoke on Monday to our HS student assembly about the vision of a zero carbon, zero waste, zero water community, highlighting the powerful interconnections between the many factors in being "green".  Though more analytical and detailed, his address none-the-less inspired the crowd, particularly with his ability to bring it all together - from waste to energy to algae and solar - in an impressive crescendo of how zero-carbon/zero-water/zero-waste communities are being designed and built. Of course, it would be hard not to be tickled silly by the fact that our new campus offers a fairly substantial step toward reaching that goal. 

By bringing representatives from Earthship and Veritas ISKL was hoping that our students will recognize the power of sustainability in career opportunities, real life technology, and urban development and their effects on personal choices. It was a chance for them to see sustainability from the perspective of the practitioner, and that makes a big difference. 

When the MS students were about to embark on their travels around Malaysia they were asked to "leave the place better than you found it". When the HS students left their assembly they were asked to partake in helping our campus be as sustainable as possible. When our students graduate from ISKL we know that a significant part of their "exceptional education" is generated through such high expectations.

The New Campus Comes Alive in Grade 5

It was a Friday. I was tired. Like most things the set up had been a bit of an issue and technical difficulties are always the norm, aren't they?  But come 1:15, when the fifth graders walked into their pod area, the place came alive!  They had been waiting for this for close to three weeks and the (renewable) energy - fittingly the unit topic - was palpable. The visitors?  The team directly responsible for creation our new campus. Architects. Check. Director of Operations. Check. Project managers. Check. Sustainability expert. Check. Engineers. Check.  All here to link our new facility to exceptional learning. 

The students were offered a glimpse of the plans related to sustainability in very informative and pretty snazzy posters focusing on nearly everything from daylight harvesting to grey water reuse to solar power to green spaces and traffic flow. The kids listened intently. At the midpoint the tables were turned. Visitors scampered across the way to the respective breakout rooms based on four main themes: Water for Energy, Pressure Points, Water harvesting, Solar/Wind energy. Other groups walked around in a gallery walk of posters and plans for the new campus. The wow factor was palpable and the questions coming at machine gun speed. 

In their respective classrooms the students impressed us all with their thoughts, intended to be "outside the box" practical things that we might consider as we plan the new campus in years to come. Ideas on the table? How about harnessing the energy from playground swings or using self adhesive, transparent solar panels on windows or cork floor tiles that absorb human weight and capturing kinetic energy? The kids were full of wonderful ideas and the visiting team loved them!  

As an observer of this sort of event it's difficult to not find inspiration in watching students engage in an authentic manner with practitioners in the field. Above and beyond the ideas presented and the sharing of thoughts and questions, it was equally impressive to see how fifth graders, only 11 years old, carried themselves as they made presentations to their peers and the visiting experts. Their poise and confidence were only superseded by the obvious level of deep understanding of their topic. 

When we all drifted away from the event the adults had a real "wow" look to their faces. The interaction alone had been a heart warming event, but they carried with them a bit of inspiration too for recognizing that our students might just be able to put sustainability into their daily practice, at our new campus and beyond. A subsequent email from CK Tang, the lead sustainability architect, noted "It was great fun for me to have the opportunity to interact with the kids and to learn from them. The great thing about them is that there is no boundary in their imagination and it is great, because they are thinking out of the box!" 

Wow. The future looks bright.

At Melawati Recycling Comes of Age

Just last week we held a recycling "stakeholders meeting" at Melawati, including Vicky Sethuraman (Canteen Supervisor) and Sumathy Kandiah (Assistant to the Principal), Sophia (Head Cleaner),  Indran Savasivam (Campus Supervisor), Sharil (Sam's Snacks), our external recycling partner and our new Melawati Recycling Club advisor, Jorge Arismendi. Oh, and myself, of course! 

As I took a look around the table I realized just how much cooperation it takes to get things off the ground and create a well-rounded culture of recycling at our school. The curriculum covers it in many areas (the most obvious being the 3rd grade Reduce, Reuse, Recycling unit) and our facilities offer inviting sets of bins to attract passers-by to partake and to prompt our students to get into the mind frame of "taking care of this place". But over the years we have identified a slight disconnect between our 'covering' the topic in the curriculum and asking our staff to do the brunt of the work. Apart from being a shortcoming of our program, we also felt this was an excellent opportunity for our students to engage in authentic learning through doing (some might even call it service learning).

So starting this year we are initiating a Melawati Recycling Club!  Working with Jorge Arismendi, our cleaning staff, facilities people and our external partners the Recycling Club will be primarily responsible for paper collection from the different pods and photocopy rooms. They will also participate in a number of educational sessions where they will learn about the "behind the scenes" goings on of recycling. They will have the chance (hopefully) to visit a distribution station and/or recycling factory along the way. In line with our new focus on service learning club members will also conduct awareness campaigns as they themselves become teachers for adults (staff, cleaning staff, parents, etc.) and students alike!

We are hopeful that this will become a great cooperative effort and allow us not only to proudly say that recycling is alive and well at Melawati, but also that our youngest students are leading the charge to changing the world, one piece of paper at a time! The on-going amounts of recycling will be kept - as always - on the Sustainable ISKL website for anyone to follow. 

It's a small step for ISKL. It's a big step for our students' involvement in ensuring that we are, in fact, "taking care of this place" and becoming "social responsible world citizens". Not bad!

Bio-Diegster Up and (almost) Running!

The new digester has finally been put in place and is "up and running", so to speak. Well, actually it will take close to a month for the gas generated from food waste to generate enough bio gas to provide enough energy for our pancake/omelet burner in Sam's at Melawati, but the hubbub of last week was hard to pass up. 

It's construction really did take a village: 

• Two visiting experts (one from India and one from Singapore) here to supervise the installation, 
• Over 15 external workers helping out with cutting, placing measuring, building  attaching and connecting all sorts of tanks and pipes, 
• A number of ISKL staff members running back and forth ensuring that everything was working, 
• A very supportive and flexible canteen staff who put up with invasions of their space as deliberations took place, 
• Several fifth grade classes coming by for quick visits and discussions about what a digester does, how it works, where the food and gas go, making designs and taking pictures (not to mention plans)

The area around the back of the cafeteria was almost busier than the election stations in Florida for Tuesday's elections! But unlike the emotional back-and-forth of the US elections, at ISKL the digester brought with it just euphoria and learning!  

A big big thank you to everyone who participated in the construction, with particular kudos to Krish and his staff, Alex Wong, John Hollenback and the Sam's Snacks cafeteria crew for their support in bringing the project to life!  Though the construction is mostly done (there remains just a bit of gas piping and plumbing to be completed) the process continues as we take baby steps to making it fully functional. During the next three months we will add increasingly more food waste, allowing the bacteria to grow accordingly and deal with the increased food supply. By January we are hoping that the bio-digester will be a fully-functional part of our community!

Classes, families and individuals are welcomes to pop over and take a look. It won't impress you with the way it looks. But it sure is impressive with what it does.