During this summer I had a lot of limitations due to the world wide pandemic that is currently happening, so finding an idea that allows myself to give back to the community by still keeping a safe distance with average citizens all over Tamarindo was going to be a challenge overall. The idea I originally came up with was doing a beach cleanup early in the morning to avoid people, but my idea came into a conclusion when I would just walk in my neighborhood which has other houses and a very large forest in front of our house that is filled with plastic,metals, bottle caps, old clothing items and much more. Seeing all this trash was very overwhelming for myself because I would never expect the problem of pollution to be very apparent in the country we live in, so it was extremely shocking. This for of service really made me feel good about what I had done, which was to help as much as I could to make a small change. This experience was very overwhelming but inspirational to me to keep on making these small changes to contribute my help to the world because it really needs it. During this service, I have excelled and accomplished two learner outcomes that have always been a bit hard to overcome during my past years in La Paz, which are to demonstrate engagement with issues of global significance and to recognize and consider the ethics of choices and actions. These two outcomes were a large part of this service because it has allowed me to identify and act upon a global issue and take action to find a solution to this issue, another aspect of the service that was shown throughout my process of cleanup the land all around neighborhood was showing awareness of the issue and completing the actions that were planned prior to fully put my dedication ahead to accomplish my service. This activity connects and involves the IB learner profile, more specifically into caring and being a thinker because this type of service really allowed myself to realize that caring doesn’t only mean ourselves and other people, it also means to care for our planet, our nature and our pollution because it is a very serious problem that needs to change. Thinker was also a key component to this service because I had to think very carefully and at the same time show initiative to accomplish my planned out goals which were to pick up every single piece of trash from a specific district near my house, which was almost accomplished within a span of 3 days. This experience was a very knowledgeable and an open minded type of project but I am personally very glad I accomplished all the plans I set before this summer regarding the CAS journal entries in order to be happy for what I had done by putting a small amount of change to our world, which to me personally is very rewarding.
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