If there’s something that needn’t be said, it’s that Collège du Léman is a very diverse environment. No kidding, one might say, correctly. An international school doesn’t earn the name out of nothing. We have students from all over the world who come here for an education and for a community like no other. Populated by young people from the edges of the globe, there can be a lot of home-sickness when one takes their first steps into this community. It’s one like no other. And it can take some humility to understand that everyone has their own way of doing things. But it also takes some courage to carry your customs with you. And respecting that and working together is what makes C.D.L such a valuable forum for collaborative effort. We bring our best, to represent and do proud our roots. And in an effort of synthesis, do each other proud with respect and being open to any opportunity to learn about how others live, love and grow in their own ways.
C.D.L promotes this valuable environment in many ways. Holding a myriad of events that have students present their origins to each other and encourage discussion and networking.
Olympus Boarder Mark can be seen here with a display on Language Diversity at CDL’s wonderful exhibition highlighting the diverse backgrounds and native origins of our wonderful students to share, strengthen and fascinate our academic community.
Our staff are as diverse as our students! And here at Olympus, we use this to our advantage in bonding as a house. Recently, we covered Diversity as a topic in our Wellbeing meetings.
Mr. Jakob demonstrates the community we have here as he is joined in the assembly by some of Olympus’ best.
And a project we developed for our Olympus community, was a survey that asked our boys to submit three things they thought set them apart from everyone else at Olympus and three things that they were sure they shared with the others in Olympus. And using this data, we believed that the boys could find a lot they thought made them different, can be shared with at least a few other people in this community.
A computer-generated ‘Word Cloud’ we produced for our Community Project featuring all the commonly utilised terms for the values our boarding community holds dear.
As much as some entities seek to convince that diversity leads to difficult rule and even more difficult progress, obviously doesn’t see the tremendous worth that putting in the work, yields. We are all different. And sometimes, that can be a difficult thing to work with. But through understanding and through humility, the keys to the kingdom lie within our respect for each other and our forgiveness.
In the rule-book of those who seek to destroy, “Divide and Conquer” is -and always will be- the flag they fly the highest.
Unity is the way. And our proud community will whole-heartedly demonstrate that, whenever and wherever people might need or want to be reminded.
Wishing you all the best from Olympus Boarding House