Purpose and Requirements of the Community Project

Who completes the community project? What communities do you belong? What can you expect to experience and learn through participation in the community project?

In schools in which the MYP finishes with year 3 or 4 of the programme, all students in the final year must complete the community project. Students are expected to spend approximately 15 hours on their community project. Schools offering the MYP including years 3 and 5 may choose to offer students the opportunity to participate in both the community project and the personal project (IB Projects Guide, 2015).

While the community project is optional for schools with all five levels of the MYP, there are substantial benefits to completing the project in level three.

These benefits include:

• Participating in community action decreases stress levels and promotes wellbeing.

• It can help build interests and talents of students.

• It builds approaches to learning skills.

• It provides a more low stakes 'practice' of skills and organization to prepare for the required personal project.

• Coordinators can use data from the community project to determine areas for programme improvement.

• It further develops the IB’s mission statement that “encourages students across the world to become active, compassionate and lifelong learners”.

• Seeing the transformation students go through when they realize they can make the impact in the world is an incredible thing to witness.

Defining Community

The community may be local, national, virtual or global. There are a wide range of definitions of community. The MYP key concept of community is defined as follows:

Communities are groups that exist in proximity defined by space, time or relationship. Communities include, for example, groups of people sharing particular characteristics, beliefs or values as well as groups of interdependent organisms living together in a specific habitat. (MYP Principles into Practice, 2014)

Defining the community project

The community project is an opportunity to engage positively in a community.

Students will apply their knowledge of the approaches to learning skills, the IB learner profiles, and understanding of the global contexts through an in-depth investigation. During the course of this minimum 15 hour project you will independently propose, plan, implement, and present a project that serves a need in a community. Students may work in groups up to three, where they will collaborate in the research, goal setting, action plan, and presentation together.

Define a GOAL to address a NEED within a COMMUNITY, based on PERSONAL INTERESTS (IB Projects Guide, 2015).

Students will generate new insights and develop deeper understandings of the world in which they live through an in-depth investigation, and communicate their findings to peers.

The three main components of the project are:

• Service as action

• Process journal

• Oral presentation