The International Baccalaureate’s MYP Personal Project is a required assessment of the MYP curriculum with students undertaking the majority of the work on the project in Year 5 of the programme. This project, which is designed to take approximately 25 hours, gives students the opportunity to share with others something that is of great interest to them and encourages connections between studies in traditional subjects and the a real world context.
The Personal Project can take many forms and for Angelina Popovski of Melbourne’s Santa Maria College, an IB World School, this included launching a change.org campaign as part of her Personal Project on factory farming, in the hopes she could create change and push Aldi to remove cage eggs from sale. Closer to home the Santa Maria College student convinced her school to stop using cage eggs in food tech classes and in the canteen.
The petition through change.org called for the supermarket giant to stop selling cage eggs. It took less than 24-hours to reach 10,000 signatures, two weeks to gain more than 60,000. In just two months the petition reached 97,088 signatures and attracted the attention of the whole country (including Chanel 10’s The Project) and won the support of animal welfare group Animals Australia.
On Wednesday, 25th May Angelina thanked the 97,088 people who lent their signature to her petition, and thanked Aldi Australia for their commitment to pull cage eggs from their shelves.
25 May 2016 — Are you ready for this? We won!!!! I've just heard that Aldi Australia have promised they'll stop selling eggs laid by hens who suffer for their whole lives in awful battery cages. Way to go Aldi OZ! This means they've finally caught up with their stores in the US and Germany that have already committed to stop selling cruel cage eggs. Massive congratulations to everyone! When I started this petition, I really had no idea where it would end. I just had hope. But as more and more people joined the movement – and then when Animals Australia kicked in behind it – I got way more confident that, together, we really could change the world in a big way for hens. This whole movement started out with just my name on this petition – then suddenly it grew and we were making news headlines, people were staging protests outside of Aldi stores, flooding their Facebook page with pleas for kindness, and who can forget Animals Australia's amazing posters popping up in Aldi carparks! I mean WOW! I know sometimes people sign online petitions and think "that's that" – but we've proved otherwise. This incredible win shows that if we stay strong, get creative, be consistent, never give up and, most importantly, keep on being kind, there's no end to what we can achieve for animals. Thank you so much for being part of this with me. I couldn't have done it without you. Now, there are plenty more supermarkets we can ask to free hens from cages – I'm already thinking on who we should ask nicely first. I hope you'll stick with me so we can keep on changing the world for hens ☺ Angelina.’
The supermarket giant, Aldi, has committed to working with suppliers to transition to selling only cage-free eggs by 2025.
“Aldi believes the best outcome will be achieved for everyone when the transition is done cooperatively and collaboratively with the industry, customers and other relevant parties,” an Aldi Australia spokesman said.
Whilst Angelina’s Personal Project is yet to be marked, IB Schools Australasia wish to congratulate her and the teachers at Santa Maria College on this real world success.
Learn More about the IB MYP Personal Project:
http://www.ibo.org/globalassets/digital-tookit/brochures/myp-brief_personal-project_2015.pdf
