Daly College Indore

This year’s conference was held at two different venues, Collingwood School in Vancouver and Glenlyon Norfolk School in Victoria. These two schools are situated on opposite sides of the lake. This kind of a split conference was held for the first time in the history of Round Square. Daly College was attending the conference at GNS.

The theme for the conference was ‘Creating sustainable communities, Local to Global’.

Our Pre Conference tour started at Toronto, where we were welcomed by the cool weather. This tour was hosted by 3 schools namely St. Clements School, Bay View Glen and Appleby College. We were accompanied by schools from Germany, South Africa and Canada. It offered opportunity for touring and knowing the place better and make friends.

We played ice breaker games which helped us know each other better. We also visited the famous CN Tower and went shopping at the Eton centre. The next day, we visited the Distillery District, Lawrence market and the Royal Ontario Museum. The museum held a lot of history ranging from dinosaurs to medieval artifacts.

Then on our way to Appleby College in Oakville, we had an interesting stop over at an aboriginal village of the natives known as the Halton Region. It was15th century reconstructed Iroquoian Village and heritage site .19 km of hiking trails with connections to Bruce Trail and interpretation stations surrounding Crawford Lake

Then we took a tour of the college and played some fun games. And to beat it all was the amazing beauty of the Niagra Falls with the wonderful maid of the mist ride which took us as close as you can get to the actual falls and the whirlpool rapids.
With this we came to the end of our pre conference tour and made our way to the beautiful island of Victoria for the conference.

As we flew from Toronto we saw from up above Victoria, a beautiful green island. When we reached the school, we started off with registration and received our sustainability bags, notebooks, welcome notes, and thermos flasks. We had “green” lunch and then went downtown for a whirlwind tour with our two guides. We had the most amazing chocolates Then we had and early dinner and headed for the informal opening ceremony. It started off with the school orchestra playing some truly amazing pieces of music. Then were the solo performances and the very popular sustainability song which was truly unforgettable. There was also an amazing youth motivator, Mike of the Beat Box who had us all pumped and filled with energy. After the last few announcements, we found our hosts and went home to sleep in our warm beds….

On the 4th of October we had a formal opening ceremony in the gym converted auditorium. The flag bearers from our school were Prachi and Dheeya. In the opening speech by the principle o the host school, He spoke about the theme of the conference, “Creating Sustainable Communities, Local To Global.” The theme underlined the monumental importance of the preservation of our natural environment. Humans are beginning to recognize that there is a need to understand and not take for granted, our role within nature. Now, more than ever, we need to assess our situation, in order to discuss options for change.

The Mayor of the city, one of the first citizens of the nation and Mr. Terry Guest were the chief guests for the ceremony. After encouraging and inspiring speeches we broke off for break.
We also got the opportunity to hear 4 keynote speakers.

The first 1 was Mr. Thomas Homer Dixon. He told us about the present situation of our fragile planet. A major part of his speech was covered by the topic of climate change and its details. In the latter half he gave us the solutions at a higher level, how each country can participate and how we can initiate it. Although during the cross questioning part most questions were related to the economic insecurity of quite a lot of countries.

2nd keynote speaker, ‘Brian Keating’, a naturalist and an environmentalist. Social service was his passion and had organized a number of camps to help the needy. He had travelled all over the globe helping and making circumstances better for the poor and unprivileged. He also made us realize the impact of global warming not only the us but also on the plants and animals with whom we coexist on this planet.

Craig kielburger was our 4th keynote. He is a person who fights against child labour. During his speech he spoke about how at the age of 12 he was idealized but ideas of human rights and freedom of children. He inspired us with realistic stories of his own life and gave us a path to think about.

Baraaza group discussions where we were distributed into different groups like the Cortez Island and others. Through baraazas we got to know our team mates better. The discussion consisted of opinions on the questions provided like – how does political and economical stability effect the environment? Do you agree this is the age of nature?

In one of the group discussions we studied our ecological footprints and suggested ways to promote sustainability in our own school comprises.

There were choices like world of sports, unity choir, artistic impressions and nature trails. All activities were extremely popular among students.

Adventure day: it was the first ever exciting Monday of our lives! We were transported to camp thunderbird in the morning where we were split into different adventure groups. This gave us a chance to know other students from all over the globe much better as we had to stay with them for the whole day. We started off with a game of hide and seek, where we hid ourselves in the forest, which was a lot of fun. And then with orienteering games where we had to find markers which were spread all over the area with the help of only a map and a compass. For the adventure, some of us did kayaking, some canoeing and some ended up rock climbing. But kayaking was the most exhilarating as we had to do the famous flip into the freezing lake as an evacuation drill before we actually ‘KAYAKED’!! We also played many other team building games which induced in us a sense of leadership and team spirit. Then there was the amazing thunderbird campfire where we danced and sang and participated in various fun games. This was also the first ‘Meatless Monday’ where there was no meat served the whole day, so as to reduce our carbon footprint.

Normally in the evenings we had entertainment programs like on 1 of the days we had the sustainability fashion show. The special ingredient of the show was that all clothes were eco-friendly and included jute clothes, used clothes or even clothes swapped with friends. one of the other days we had another program which involved all the delegates . We were given hand- drums which numbered to a whooping 400. We all created music and got lost in the rhythm which filled the gymnasium.

On the last day, in that evening all of us gathered at the royal BC museum for the final dinner there was a colossal spread cuisines laid all over the museum. After the dinner we were all transported back to the school for the most looked-for part of the evening. This dance was organized specially for the delegates and was out of bounds for the staff.

On the last day there was the Annual General Meeting where new schools were added to Round Square. This was followed by the formal closing ceremony by the chairman of round square, King Constantine.

After it was over, we were left with many unforgettable memories of the conference and got to know many cultures and traditions. We were also left with optimistic ideas on creating sustainable communities and became more aware of the nature.