Every IB student at BIS is given an opportunity to establish to fully test his or her competences in challenging, and meaningful circumstances. If we come at the world in a 'default' mode of acceptance, nothing changes. However, if we can learn to look at society critically, and to question the way the pieces of the jigsaw are put together, then a radical shift occurs: we exchange action for passivity; and emerging self (with new skills and resources) for a sclerotic self (in which nothing changes). So: that's what CAS does: it obliges to the student to ask: How may I grow? How may I better adapt myself to my society so that I shape, rather than observe it. What IS my capacity? Both the SERVICE and CREATIVITY aspects of CAS help you discover the extent to which a young person can re-imagine and reshape the world, and in so doing take a stand against the forces of conformity and dependency. IN ACTION you also invigorate a productive and purposeful body-mind synergy. CAS is not for the fainthearted: it works, if you are willing to.

Have an idea. Overcome fear. Make it appear.

CAS students bequeath a remarkable and astonishing metal and bamboo school - Sekolah Bisa! - now in its first term of operations and providing an education for 26 Indonesian children previously excluded from school. If you would like to be a part of the bamboo school students' future, and support the students by making a donation, contact adrian_thirkell@bis.or.id

All CAS activities reinforce the idea that to live, is to become. 'Becoming' requires a hands-on engagement with activities that explore the degree to which you can create (for example nutritious meals for children whose diet is impoverished); can serve (for example, entering a team of scavenging children in the annual inter-school Coca Cola soccer League) and move (that is, engage in all kinds of physical activity to improve your body-mind synergy).What's left? Nothing: just get on with it!

Sekolah Bisa! - surely South East Asia's most remarkable school concept: humane, beautiful, calm and a means for 26 children to re grasp life, with a fresh opportunity to attain a primary leavers' diploma. It reveals a CAPACITY in students not to be by standers - but to engage with society in order to change it for the better. (And what you may NOT know, is that it's also supported by a core group of BIS parents, who support its various programs, from teaching to nutrition. Don't stand a-part. Be a part.

WHY WE DO WHAT WE DO: and why we can't NOT do it.

Every CAS project at BIS invites students to seek to engage with articles enshrined in UNICEF'S Rights of a Child. In particular:

• Articles 7 & 8: “The child shall be registered immediately after birth and … have the right … to a name … a nationality … and to preserve his or her identity ….” We are advocates of this article because students discover amongst marginalised communities in Jakarta that many children are not registered as citizens of their own country., with negative consequences for access to health, education and mobility.
• Article 23 recognizes “… the right of the disabled child to special care” and the right to “… enjoy a full and decent life in conditions which ensure dignity ….” We advocate these articles in particular through a long association with Syap Ibu, a home for handicapped children, and through supporting access to a doctor for a ten year old, near-blind boy, named Ila. 
• Article 24 recognises all children have the right to “the highest attainable standard of health, including access to primary health care, nutritious foods and clean drinking-water.” We are advocates of this article through the provision of fruit to scavenging communities; through our Clinic Kecil health program and through monitoring the health of all the children we support in every one of our programs.
• Article 31 recognizes “… the right of the child to rest and leisure, to engage in play and recreational activities appropriate to the age of the child.” We are advocates of this article by ensuring that children from a shanty near our school enter the Jakarta schools' JFSA Coca Cola League. 
• Articles 32 & 36 recognise that children must be “protected from economic exploitation ... from [hazardous] work [and] all other forms of exploitation.” We are advocates of these articles through our sponsoring of schooling for 11 young scavenging children and by employing two boys at BIS who were formerly scavenging, shoeless, on the streets of our community. Through direct action, staff pay the boys' stipends from their own pockets. 
• Article 27 recognises that every child has “the right to a standard of living adequate for [her/his] physical, mental, spiritual, moral and social development.” We advocate this article through many CAS activities, including those that provide respite for children from degraded circumstances, but most importantly through educational programs for children excluded from school. 
• Articles 28 & 29 “recognize the right of the child to education … [that develops] the child’s personality, talents and mental and physical abilities.”  We are advocates of this article many,many times over in the children we send to school. If you'd like to sponsor a child, just email. So far we have extensive sponsorship from the American Women's Association in Jakarta; through private bequests and through ad-hoc fundraising. It costs US$100 to keep a child in school for a year: not much to change a life.

The Convention on the Rights of the Child is a living document because at BIS students make it so. But a child's right is only affirmed through  action. Our actions are only good when a child benefits.

CAS contests why children in Indonesia are obliged to grow up in shanty communities, like the one above. Sometimes we have to contest the parents' choices, who choose to leave the family home in the kampong; who choose subsequently that their children are not registered at birth, are not innoculated and do not attend school. That in itself is quite a contest! But we also contest the blindness in society, which causes us to look, but not to see. Or, worse, causes us to see, but not to feel. Restoring our capacity to feel - a neurologial and moral function - is vital to the CAS students' experience and an essential part of a students' growth.

Pond Project  

The pond at the CAS Free School site has been rehabilitated by students as part of an environmental recovery initiative. The images of the pond's regeneratation from malarial cess pit into eco-site are indicative of the power of CAS students to effect a positive change in their environment. 

Before - and after stage 1 reclamation

After stage 2 reclamation -and below, job done!

Alim, at 8, appeared to have capitulated to circumstances and to accepting his lot as a "pemulong" and scavenging for a living. He had dropped out of school and begun to collect plastic and paper from the streets of Bintaro. But through the intervention of CAS students Alim has been able to start again: he is now working at BIS in Year 3, assisting with displays. he is paid directly by Year 3 staff. He is also being supported in a duck-rearing business by Yr 12 CAS students. For Alim, contact with BIS has been life-changing and life-affirming. He is a measure of how our students refuse to take the world as it is, but strive to make it better, one life at a time. Watch for Alim's duck eggs on sale at BIS!

Where There's a Wall There's a Way to Teach English - thanks to CAS 

The CAS Free School team (TFS) played their first ever Coca Cola League fixture, Saturday 9th January. It was not only a good game of football (against the French School) but a declaration: that as part of the CAS program at BIS, we believe in sport for all. Some of the team went back to their shanty communities after the game, but during the match, they played on equal terms, with skill and determination, and without prejudice. Sport as an act of humanity.

The UNESCO Award Winning CAS 'Free' School The project placed first in the DaimlerChrysler sponsored UNESCO-Mondialogo schools contest 2007 with Aaron Pushparatnam (Melbourne Uni. Engineering) collecting the award of Euros 3500 in Rome.

What Is CAS?: CAS is a challenging, exploratory and often transformational experience based on your engagement with three components: Creativity, Action, and Service. It's integral to the IB Diploma and complements academic study with experiential learning in situations designed to challenge and extend you, as well as fostering physical, emotional and perceptual growth. CAS enables you to recognize and respond to some of the challenges that arise from inequality and injustice in society. Creative and Service activities, in and beyond school, whether undertaken individually or as a group, help foster a responsible, mature and purposeful participation in society. It's also an opportunity for you to establish productive relationships with your peers, with other members of the school and with the larger community. Resourceful and informed participation in CAS is a way of resisting pressures society places on you to disengage from and remain passive within your environment.

To successfully engage in CAS you should participate in an active and sustained manner across three areas:

You are required to complete a range of meaningful activities for each component and to reflect, in formal write ups, on Manage Bac, on every aspect of your participation.

Your choice of activities will often incorporate two or three components: for example, you may support a pupil in the primary school (Service) as well as devise a learning strategy to assist that child’s development (Creativity). The key aspect of all activities is that they offer a genuine challenge and are a real benefit to both you and others. Engagement with CAS should include the following:

Service within school, for example supporting a primary teacher or running a mini 5-a-side tournament.

Service beyond school and which has a direct and positive impact on the lives of Indonesian children and is responsive to those marginalized by poverty, lack of schooling, ill health or limited access to resources.

An activity undertaken collaboratively, for example running a mini soccer tournament or publishing the school newspaper or hosting children from a local scavenger community for an afternoon of games.

Who is CAS? Most importantly, you the students are, along with CAS coordinator, Mr. Adrian Thirkell; the CAS assistants, Adimas and Bagus, and the CAS team, which supports and helps resource the program. Your IB Tutor also has an active role in the program, whether sharing in CAS activities, discussing your CAS commitments in tutor periods or helping you maintain your journal.

How is CAS organized?

CAS presumes a full commitment to a range of activities over four terms of the two-year IB program, at least 4 hours a week. You are offered a wide range of well-researched and challenging service and creativity activities in and beyond BIS. Activities are organized to be responsive to the unique needs and provisions of the school’s Indonesian setting and are reflective of BIS’s international ethos.

You are guided to make best use of the opportunities to establish and sustain a purposeful and well-balanced program, building from the program’s core activities and supplementing these with other activities initiated by you.

Activities are generally supported by a teacher or approved supervisor who encourages you and evaluates your performance, but students should also except to engage in activities without direct supervision.

The CAS Journal on Manage Bac

Students who wish to present aspects of CAS at an assembly or within tutor groups are very welcome to do so. Such presentations are an important part of the reflective process.

Primary CAS: taking up the culture when young