[ti:IB Program Aims to Form 'Students of the World'] [ar:Jim Tedder] [al:Education Report] [00:00.00]This is the VOA Special English Education Report. [00:05.39]The International Baccalaureate Organization [00:09.03]was founded in nineteen sixty-eight. [00:11.98]It works with schools in one hundred forty-three countries [00:16.67]to offer programs for students age three to nineteen. [00:21.95]These programs, it says, "help develop the intellectual, [00:27.61]personal, emotional and social skills to live, [00:32.70]learn and work in a rapidly globalizing world." [00:37.58]The organization says IB programs [00:41.98]are in more than three thousand schools. [00:44.58]The majority of these schools offer IB diploma programs. [00:50.02]High school students have to complete six courses, [00:54.05]pass exams and write a twenty-page paper [00:58.96]to earn an IB diploma. [01:01.66]The courses are in humanities, science, arts, math, [01:07.74]a second language and their own language. [01:11.83]Students can also attend special events. [01:16.02]Recently more than three hundred IB diploma students [01:21.15]from thirteen countries attended a conference [01:24.76]at the University of British Columbia in Canada. [01:28.88]The five-day conference was called [01:31.68]"The New Sustainability: [01:34.01]Making Things Better, Not Just Less Bad." [01:39.03]The students heard from professors, [01:41.94]graduate students, activists and others. [01:46.03]One of the speakers was Drew Deutsch, director of IB Americas. [01:52.28]He says the conference was meant as a way for students [01:56.72]not only to learn about the environment, [02:00.23]but also to develop lasting relationships. [02:04.27]DREW DEUTSCH: "We want to send the students back to their schools [02:06.41]to highlight issues surrounding protecting the environment, [02:10.42]but also make sure these students become more students of the world, [02:13.02]and that they form bonds with peers their own age from around the world. [02:17.12]And, obviously, with social networking and the tools [02:20.11]that are available to students today, we expect [02:21.91]that they will have formed these bonds really for life." [02:24.51]Seventeen-year-old Itzel Chavez is a student [02:28.35]at the International School of Beaverton, [02:30.96]in the American state of Oregon. [02:33.65]She was one of twenty-one IB students who received scholarships [02:39.43]to be able to attend the conference. [02:41.97]ITZEL CHAVEZ: "I really wanted to go. [02:43.42]So I applied for a scholarship and I had to write an essay. [02:47.32]And in my school they chose one person, [02:50.26]and I got chosen for the scholarship. So I got to go." [02:53.55]She says the main speakers would describe a sustainability program [02:58.45]or tell how a special project improved the environment in their community. [03:04.43]Then the students had to choose a project to present to the conference. [03:09.81]ITZEL CHAVEZ: "We would get into groups of about nineteen [03:13.21]or twenty students and we would have to come up with a project [03:17.31]for the end of the week that showed what we learned." [03:21.10]Itzel worked on a video. It asked students three questions [03:25.84]about sustainability and how they would make it happen [03:30.18]in their own communities. [03:31.27]After showing it, the members of the group went on stage [03:35.67]to tell what they themselves would do to protect the environment. [03:41.26]And that's the VOA Special English Education Report, [03:45.90]written by Jerilyn Watson. [03:48.60]To read and listen to more stories for people learning English, [03:53.04]go to voa.com. [03:57.23]I'm Jim Tedder.