about:: The Project

Challenge 20/20 is a program organized by National Association of Independent Schools (NAIS) in which one school from the US will be paired up with another partner school outside the country. The team will work together during the fall to propose a solution to one of the 20 global problems stated in the book High Noon: 20 Global Problems, 20 years to Solve Them, by Jean Francois Rischard. For our team, students and teachers from Chatham Hall (US) and Diocesan Girls' School (HKSAR) joined together and worked on the problem of global infectious disease. All teams in this challenge are invited to share their ideas in the Challenge 20/20 Student Summit at the Annual Conference in Boston, March 1-4.

In order to have a better understanding of what the problem - global infectious disease is about, our team firstly browsed through the web and some other materials to have a general idea of the problem. Afterwards, our team members exchanged ideas through MSN messenger. We then tried to define what an infectious disease is and discussed the focus of this problem.

After a series of discussions, we finally reached a common viewpoint: to use 2 examples, HIV and Avian Influenza respectively, as the case studies as these 2 disease were quite serious recently and that they had the potential in becoming lethal infectious diseases.

Then we did some more research on the 2 diseases, such as the causes and the impacts, before further decisions were made. After that we gathered together on MSN messenger again and decided to divide ourselves into small groups so as to look more deeply into different parts of the problems, for instance, the global view and current situation of the problem, and also current practices. Each group took a closer look at their respective parts and each group wrote a summary on their part. The whole team could then know more about global infectious diseases.

Finally, our team proposed our solutions to this problem and how the suggested solutions could be implemented so as to make the world's health care system more ideal, and that the problem of global infectious disease would not be as threatening to the people in the world as before.