The Borneo Project
YEAR 13, TERM 1
The Borneo Project has been a really interesting thing for me to do. I’d wanted to join it last year but hadn’t been able to, on account of already having too many activities. The idea with the Borneo Project is to raise money and then to go to poorer villages in Sabah (a short flight from JIS) and help out. The money raised buys books for local children (in their own native language) and building materials - last year students built a kindergarten where children could go to school.
I don’t plan to go on the trip at the end of the year, because it is in June and I will have left Brunei by then. I do help out with the fundraisers we do at school. Our school is 1,700 students so there is a lot of money to go around. We split up into groups to work on different things, and I help sell drinks at House sports events, which are usually every week.
I didn’t sign up for a leadership role, because I wanted to do fewer activities this year and really focus on my upcoming IB exams. I did a lot of stuff after-school last year, and I wanted to spend more time on work for Year 13.
This has really helped me develop my Malay language skills. Because JIS is an international school Malay language classes are not stipulated and most foreign students don’t speak it at all. I lived in Indonesia previously and was required to learn Bahasa Indonesia, which is very similar to Bahasa Melayu, so I did speak some Malay already. However, as part of the preparation for going to Sabah and helping out the local students have been doing a quick Malay class in each Borneo Project session to teach us some basic terms. Speaking another language is a useful skill and it was a good one to brush up on.
