Last Friday 45 Biology students sailed on the boat “West Sea” for a three-day field trip on the island of Svanøy. They were accompanied by teacher Jelena, Rektor Guðmundur & family and support staff. The trip was almost cancelled due to the forecast of heavy rain but luckily, at the last moment, the weather gods changed their mind and kindly even offered some sunshine.

The island of Svanøy is special not only for its stunning beauty – but also as one of the top educational centres for deer farming worldwide.
(See our hosts website here).

As always, the purpose of the trip was “for the right brain” to appreciate the beauty of the island (The Pearl of Sunnfjord) and “for the left brain” to study ecology “in-situ”. The students engaged in measuring oceanographic factors, collecting and observing plankton and discovering sea shore creatures and their interaction with the habitat. They also engaged in discussion on the sustainability of a small island and were exposed to a reality-check about plastics. During the “dugnad”, clearing up two beaches, they discovered that plastic waste reaches, without discrimination, even this remote Nordic island.

We are cordially thankful for being so warmly welcomed to this amazing island – and given free use of the facilities of the “Svanøy Foundation” for all the years we’ve been taking our students. The leader Johan Trygve Solheim, hops all over the world providing education courses on this noble way of exploiting animals for meat (and other products) while enabling them to live happy, healthy and dignified lives in their natural ecosystem. Trygve enthusiastically shared his amazing knowledge and experiences about anything and everything to do with deer, answering hundreds of questions. He even roared! Most exciting of all – he enabled the very first close encounter with non-caged wild animals to most of our students.

A big ‘Thank you’ roar to you, Trygve!

See here for an album of photos from the trip.

We were delighted to receive alumnus Mark Wang back to his old college this weekend.

Mark is the founder and Chair of UWC Changshu. He has been nominated as one of 10 most influential individuals in the Jiangsu Province. Mark arrived with a team who are preparing a film about his dreams and ambitions – their origin and fulfillment. The impact Mark is having in Chinese education and regional development is a credit to the UWC movement. As he says himself: coming to UWC was a shift like going from black-and-white to full colour.