European Space Agency: STEM and Gender Equality

Matilda and Nina travelled to ESTEC, the European Space Agency base located in Noordwijk, to have a special tour around STEM and gender equality. The group was led by current ASH parent Sara, who is an engineer at ESTEC and a strong advocate in motivating young girls to engage in STEM related studies and careers. The group was able to visit two facilities on site and learn about some of the various engineering projects being developed at ESTEC. They also had some discussion time where Sara shared her academic and professional experiences as a female in the field of STEM, paving the way for the students to explore the UN goal of equality on a more personal level.

The tour helped me understand in more depth the issues of gender inequality in the workforce, and how several companies are working towards making a change, like ESA. Ms. Sara explained her experience and how women at ESA play a major and equally valuable role in the success of space missions and how ESA strives to sustain a gender inclusive environment. As a society we should continue to fight for gender equality and provide everyone with the same opportunities regardless of gender, or any other factor. Ms. Sara’s experiences are proof to me that women play a crucial role in scientific and engineering domains and I am more convinced now than ever that I want to pursue a STEM career. I was glad to learn that ESA actively takes measures to promote gender equality, as I have always dreamed of working there one day.  - Matilda

Meeting Ms. Sara and learning more about her experience at ESA really allowed me to see women in the STEM field as it is commonly a male dominated field. We discussed how we see a large difference in the ratio between girls and boys especially in classes such as physics, robotics or high level maths and how women tend to be less interested in those academic classes. We thought it would be great if young children and students become more exposed to female role models in stem fields such as Ms. Sara to motivate and inspire girls to possibly go into that direction of field. - Nina

International Criminal Court: Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions

Mia and Casper were part of a group who travelled to the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague to have a special tour and discussion around the UN goal of Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions. The group was led by current ASH parent Tom, who is a Senior Advisor at the ICC providing legal and policy advice to the Prosecutor. Our students were given an insider look at the operations of the ICC and daily workings of how the themes of peace and justice are carried out on a global scale.

While visiting the ICC we learned how international justice is carried out, how cases are presented and chosen, the steps involved in a trial, and also what happens after. This experience helped me realize how important it is to have a fair and open legal system to help maintain peace. It was also a revelation to understand how difficult it is to achieve justice on a global scale. Even though the ICC works to hold people accountable for war crimes, genocide, and crimes against humanity, bringing the accused individual to court is not always easy or even possible. This helped me understand that while international justice is powerful, it also faces real challenges and that makes its work even more important. - Mia

The field trip to the ICC was a truly wonderful and eye opening experience. The tour and extensive Q&A session allowed us to understand that even with all of the negativity in our world, strong institutions serve justice and provide hope to even the most dire situations. It was often stated that the most fulfilling part of working at the ICC was thereby proving justice and peace to those in vulnerable situations. This deepened our connection with UN goal 16, whereby peace and justice by way of the ICC remain central in the furthering of humanity as a whole. Personally I found the ambiguous link between politics and justice to be of utmost interest, as the respective motives often don't align and require careful deliberation. - Casper

Wassenaar Beach: Clean Water and Sanitation

Mika and Hannah were part of a group that travelled to the local Wassenaar beach to help make an impact on local pollution, related to the UN goal of Clean Water and Sanitation, and Life Below Water. The beach clean up allowed students to address the themes of clean water access, sanitation and conservation of ocean life, right in their own backyard.

Participating in the beach clean-up helped me see firsthand how pollution affects nature. It made me realize how important it is to protect our beaches and oceans, not just for the animals, but for us too. It opened my eyes to how much we rely on clean spaces and how easily they can be harmed. It made the goal feel more personal and something I can actually help with, that small actions can make a big difference, how easy it is to help when you just take the time. - Mika

I realized that pollution is far more widespread than it appears, even in places that seem clean on the surface. Even in what can be considered a clean town, there was still a significant amount of pollution scattered about. By making it our sole objective to clean up trash on this day, we were exposed to the reality and scale at which pollution takes place across the globe. - Hannah

Amsterdam: Sustainable Consumption and Production

Carolina journeyed to Amsterdam with her group to visit Mike Rubinovitz ’85, an entrepreneur and business owner in the sustainable leather and hardware industry, and natural materials expert. Mike has developed his global business experience on the basis of recycling natural materials and how these things can be incorporated into individual, personal lifestyles as well as larger scale businesses. Venturing into this alum’s workshop was the perfect setting for our students to experience hands-on learning related to Sustainable Consumption and Production.

This trip helped us to find more ways of being personally sustainable and gave us new ideas like composting our fruits in our own backyard, and then how to use them as sustainable leather tanning agents. We were able to see many more ways of helping the environment in our daily lives and came up all together as a class with different ways we could be more sustainable in our daily lives. It was also very interesting to learn about making an olive based leather tanning agent, in place of harsh chemicals.   - Carolina