Lisa Allen-Agos­ti­ni

Imag­ine be­ing 16 years old and dropped in­to a to­tal­ly new cul­ture, among youths from all over the world, to study for two years while do­ing com­mu­ni­ty ser­vice and raft­ing, moun­tain climb­ing or bik­ing. That's the life-chang­ing ex­pe­ri­ence open to four T&T stu­dents this year through the UWC, for­mer­ly Unit­ed World Col­leges.

Chair­man of the T&T Trust of the in­ter­na­tion­al or­gan­i­sa­tion, Dr Ax­el Kra­vatzky, said in an in­ter­view last week that the UWC start­ed off 49 years ago as an ini­tia­tive to pre­vent a third world war but its fo­cus has widened over the years. "I think it has an in­creased rel­e­vance and role in the world. Now with glob­al­i­sa­tion and cli­mate change... the scale of things that need to be done, the type of in­ter­con­nec­tions be­tween these places call for a spe­cial way of think­ing and con­nect­ing with one an­oth­er and un­der­stand­ing the world in a dif­fer­ent way."

Kra­vatzky him­self earned his bac­calau­re­ate at Unit­ed World Col­lege in the US. An eth­nic Ger­man, he was born in Ro­ma­nia. "I'd trav­elled a lot be­fore, but it still added a di­men­sion I would nev­er have had ac­cess to. You can meet peo­ple and go to coun­tries, but it's a dif­fer­ent thing when you are with peo­ple from oth­er na­tions and work­ing to­geth­er to­wards a com­mon goal–in this case ed­u­ca­tion, ser­vice and ad­ven­ture." The in­ter­na­tion­al bac­calau­re­ate, he added, has a "chal­leng­ing cur­ricu­lum." The bac­calau­re­ate is done in over 6,000 schools world­wide and is a qual­i­fi­ca­tion equiv­a­lent to A-Lev­els. It in­cludes six ar­eas of study: na­tive lan­guage, for­eign lan­guage, in­di­vid­u­als and so­ci­eties, ex­per­i­men­tal sci­ences, maths, and the arts.

Four stu­dents now prepar­ing for this year's CXC ex­am will have a shot at do­ing the in­ter­na­tion­al bac­calau­re­ate at UWC cam­pus­es in Wales, USA, Hong Kong and Cos­ta Ri­ca from Sep­tem­ber. There are 11 UWC col­leges, in which the last two years of high school are taught, and two schools, which teach from very young chil­dren to teens. They are dis­trib­uted all over the world, in lo­ca­tions as di­verse as Italy and Swazi­land. Eigh­teen T&T stu­dents have grad­u­at­ed from the col­leges since 2005 when the lo­cal trust be­gan op­er­at­ing, Kra­vatzky said. There are a fur­ther 18 stu­dents cur­rent­ly en­rolled. About one in ten T&T stu­dents who ap­ply are suc­cess­ful. "When you're in the pro­gramme you feel you're on tur­bo charge, every­thing is ac­cel­er­at­ed," he said. "When you go home you feel like some­body has the hand­brake up. The sys­tem is de­signed to let you do things. Once you say you want to do it, there are not too many im­ped­i­ments. It's not done for you but you get sup­port to do it. It en­cour­ages peo­ple to take ini­tia­tive."

A life-chang­ing ex­pe­ri­ence

Yanik Ques­nel, 20, at­tend­ed UWC Cos­ta Ri­ca in 2006. A St Mary's Col­lege grad­u­ate, he said in a tele­phone in­ter­view last week that he de­cid­ed on the spur of the mo­ment to try the UWC in­ter­na­tion­al bac­calau­re­ate. Apart from be­ing a rug­by play­er on the Na­tion­al U-19 team he al­so vol­un­teered at a soup kitchen in Port-of-Spain, he said. He thinks that tipped the scales in his favour. He earned a schol­ar­ship to the pro­gramme. A piv­otal part of the UWC pro­gramme is ser­vice. All stu­dents must be part of a com­mu­ni­ty ser­vice project. In Cos­ta Ri­ca Ques­nel vol­un­teered at a lo­cal vet clin­ic and al­so coached a Spe­cial Olympics track and field team. The team earned a sil­ver medal in Bei­jing, he said. Did the ex­pe­ri­ence change him?

"Def­i­nite­ly. All for the bet­ter. It made me more sen­si­tive to glob­al is­sues. It has made me a lot more aware of what I can do in my coun­try and com­mu­ni­ty, how I can change it." Al­bert Chow's son Nicholas fin­ished his in­ter­na­tion­al bac­calau­re­ate at UWC Hong Kong in May, 2009. Chow said his son came back a dif­fer­ent per­son. "He's changed, re­mark­ably so. In terms of con­fi­dence, his abil­i­ty to in­ter­act with peo­ple, his knowl­edge of the world and his take on en­vi­ron­men­tal is­sues, his out­look on life. I couldn't imag­ine the gen­tle­man that came back from the gen­tle­man that left. A to­tal­ly dif­fer­ent hu­man be­ing in all pos­i­tive ways." Nicholas is in his first year of uni­ver­si­ty in the US, on schol­ar­ship. Chow cred­its the UWC for that. The fam­i­ly paid for his two years in Hong Kong.

"It is cost­ly, com­par­a­tive­ly, but (it is worth it be­cause of) the ex­po­sure. And when you're fin­ished with UWC the like­li­hood of you get­ting a schol­ar­ship to a uni­ver­si­ty is sev­er­al hun­dred times bet­ter than the av­er­age stu­dent."

Ap­ply­ing to UWC

Stu­dents prepar­ing to sit CXC this year can ap­ply once they are no old­er than 17 on Ju­ly 1. The UWC said in its brochure they must be "tal­ent­ed in­side and out­side of the class­room." De­pend­ing on how many ap­pli­ca­tions are re­ceived, ap­pli­cants spend one or two days in a se­lec­tion ex­er­cise. "They do ex­pe­ri­en­tial ac­tiv­i­ties to­geth­er that re­quire team­work and lead­er­ship, then some chal­leng­ing de­bate top­ics, where they need to ar­gue for and against cer­tain po­si­tions, then a writ­ten test–they write an es­say on var­i­ous top­ics–then they have an in­ter­view or two," Kra­vatzky said. "We are re­al­ly not look­ing on­ly for aca­d­e­m­ic ex­cel­lence. If some­body is on­ly aca­d­e­m­ic but does noth­ing else, they will not pass."

It takes some­body who wants to do more than aca­d­e­mics, who is do­ing more than aca­d­e­mics, who is en­gaged in their com­mu­ni­ty, en­vi­ron­ment, the world, who has a pas­sion for mu­sic, sport, art, sci­ence, chess, any­thing be­yond the class­room. The prin­ci­pals of these col­leges em­pha­sise that they would like us to take chances with peo­ple. Po­ten­tial is part of the cri­te­ria. You want to give it to the peo­ple who have the biggest im­pact." He added, "This is about peace and a sus­tain­able fu­ture. So if you're re­al­ly pas­sion­ate and want to make a dif­fer­ence in high-ten­sion area in Trinidad, you're wel­come. It doesn't have to be Pales­tine." Three of the four places avail­able to T&T stu­dents of­fer a par­tial schol­ar­ship. UWC T&T will help with the cost of the rest of the fee, Kra­vatzky said.

"We get about 50 per cent schol­ar­ships from the col­leges them­selves. If the col­lege costs about US $20,000 a year, they give us $10,000 and we as­sist the par­ents to pay the rest. The prin­ci­ple is that mon­ey will not be the thing that keeps you back." TrinRe is the UWC T&T Trust's prin­ci­pal spon­sor. The 2010 UWC ap­pli­ca­tion dead­line has been ex­tend­ed to April 18. For more in­for­ma­tion and the ap­pli­ca­tion form, go to: www.tt.uwc.org