Including, running, tennis, cooking, photography, woodwork, climbing and badminton.

Happy Birthday to Vlad, Mishaal, Baudelio and Junqi who ALL had birthdays this week. We hope you had great days boys. Now it’s time to eat the mountains of chocolate cake we now have in the office!!

This weekend we introduced an all NEW Weekly Badminton Tournament, with our very own Mr Max! Well done to all our boys who took part today.

This week we introduced Wellbeing Pillar 3 Building Positive Friendships. Next week we will discuss with the boys in the House: What is a Toxic friend? and how can we identify them?

Nadim will have a birthday during the break whilst at home with his family. Have a great time Nadim!!

On Saturday we celebrated “L’Escalade” a traditional Genève festival that celebrates the victory of the Geneva republic against the Savoy’s Army in 1602. Each year we buy a chocolate marmite full of candies. By tradition, the youngest and the eldest person in the room smash it.

For more information https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%27Escalade

Our amazing Amir played a stunning piece of music as part of his upcoming concert with the Geneva Conservatoire.

He did a fantastic rendition of Beethoven moonlight sonata 3rd.

Here is a small teaser….

This weekend we had our annual Christmas Dinner. A lovely opportunity for the whole Boarding Community to come together and have a formal evening. The students dressed very smartly and we had some beautiful food.

This week we had our Boarding Award Ceremony to celebrate some of the achievements made during 1st Semester. We acknowledged those in each House who showed outstanding enthusiasm, motivation, and involvement in the Boarding programme.

Winning the Boarding Life award were Gabriel and Karim. Both these boys are polite, respectful, and courteous to both their peers and staff. They are held in high regard amongst their peers. They are happy and willing to assist the House Parents and often take on extra responsibilities within the house.

Winning the Activity Awards were Ablaikhan and Hector. These boys enthusiastically participate in the afternoon activity schedule along with enjoying the sports facilities on offer during social time in the evenings. They also eagerly participate in the weekend programme, taking advantage of the trips on offer or the activities offered.

Finally, we also awarded those students who achieved the highest grades in their year. We were very proud that Gabriel and Nadim achieved these awards.

W

Coinciding with Swiss traditions, the annual Geneva Escalade running race took place this weekend. Kosei, Iman and Vlad from Léman 1 took part and ran an impressive 5km. The boys did really well and can all be very proud of themselves!

The Léman 1 boys got the opportunity to take part in the wide range of activities we have on offer this weekend, including ice skating, boxing, tennis, running, cooking and basketball. A fun, action packed weekend.

On our journey for Pillar 2– this week we explored Community Service and Charity.

This is something we are incredibly passionate about in the Boarding Community. It is a way for us to give our time, energy, love and support to those in need or who are less fortunate. It is an important educational moment for students to learn empathy for others and to appreciate the position we are in and how we can use it to spread kindness.

We had our Boarding Counsellor come to give an introduction to Empathy. In her conversation, we concluded that empathy is the first step in making us sensitive to the importance of community service. When we help others, we express our empathy. When we help others it is the best way to combat social differences, and it also gives us a glimpse of the meaning of life from a perspective that is sometimes completely opposite to ours.

This week Dias gave the presentation.

This week we had a wonderful Lebanese dinner. It was another way we promote Diversity and celebrate the Internationalism that we have in our Boarding Community. Each week we have an offering from a different country.

This past weekend was another busy one. With plenty of activities on offer for the students to take part in. We had our usual offering of tennis, Cooking, Running, Volleyball, Climbing, Photography, Woodworks, Baking, Chess, Biking and Zumba. However this weekend we also had the charity events of Samedi du Partage a trip to Gruyere and our Community Service.

For this week’s part of our Pillar 2, we focused on Discrimination and Diversity.

This week Hector did our presentation.

A lot of our Boarding students, including some of the Léman boys headed to Paris this weekend. They saw the sights, ate all the local food and had a fantastic time.

A huge well done to Vlad who has set himself the amazing goal of running 7km in this year’s Geneva Escalade. He has shown fantastic determination and an amazing attitude to achieve this goal and he has been training very hard. Keep up the good work Vlad.

Keeping Pillar 2 in mind, one way of promoting diversity and protecting others is to think of those less fortunate and who we can help. We, therefore, felt that for Christmas we could do gift boxes for those in other countries who are desperately in need of even the basic essentials, plus a little treat for the festive season.

The Boarding Community came together financially but more importantly with their time, energy and love to create these boxes.

This weekend the school had their first internal volleyball tournament. This was well represented by Leman 1 in which we had 7 students participating. As our students were mixed in different teams which means some more success than others, however, we still had Leman 1 players in the winning team!

This weekend we continued our weekly Community Service by tidying up our campus and the local area. We feel we have a duty to care for where we live and the land we borrow from nature. It is important for students to be able to give their time and energy and take this moment to reflect. Everything that they pick up, has been dropped by another person. If only we all took responsibility for our own trash and recycled it, we would all be living in a better place.

Following on from Pillar 1. We have embarked on our second Pillar.

Under the umbrella phrase of “Promoting Diversity and Protecting Against Bullying” we wish to focus on two takeaway points;

Bullying happens in different social settings – deals with the fact that bullying is not just related to racism and physical violence. It can be found in a lot of different social contexts and takes place for various reasons. It links with discrimination, and it is one way of expressing it.

Diversity: how can we work together? – As an opposite to discrimination we have diversity and all the options we have available to tighten our bonds and learn more about each other, again in a whole lot of different settings. Community Service and Charity allow us to perceive the world and people from a different perspective and encourage us to fight our stereotypes while at the same time granting us the possibility of working together for common causes.

Thanks to all the students who have helped tidy the campus this afternoon by removing any rubbish they came across.

Gabriel got on stage and spoke in front of the whole Boarding community this week to talk about the incredible work he did over the summer for wildlife preservation. We are incredibly proud of Gabriel’s passion for taking care of the environment and the work he did was amazing and very important.