CAS Project Ideas: A Practical Guide for IB Diploma Students
CAS (Creativity, Activity, Service) is a core requirement of the IB Diploma Programme. Every student completes a CAS project: a collaborative effort that runs for at least a month and ends in reflection. It isn't graded, but it builds teamwork and initiative, and it gives students concrete examples to draw on in university personal statements and interviews.
The strongest CAS project ideas are collaborative, run for at least a month, and respond to a need someone actually has. A school trip can tick all three boxes, but only when the trip is one stage of a longer project rather than the whole thing. Students from Beijing World Youth Academy (BWYA) did this on a five-day cycling and service trip to Jeju Island in South Korea, which we designed as a CAS project.
Below is a quick check on what qualifies, a short list of ideas, and a way to build a CAS project around one of our school trips abroad.
What Counts as a CAS Project?
A CAS project is a collaborative series of CAS experiences that lasts at least one month, from the first planning meeting to the final reflection. According to the IB’s CAS project guidance, a project can focus on a single strand of creativity, activity or service, or combine two or all three. Service carries one extra condition: the community has to benefit, not just the student. The IB describes service as an unpaid exchange in which the rights, dignity and autonomy of everyone involved are respected.
| Program | Location | Community Need |
|---|---|---|
| Vietnam Village Voices | Mai Chau, Vietnam | Village infrastructure |
| Creating Spaces, Creating Smiles | Hanoi, Vietnam | Safe, creative play spaces |
| Service on the Soils of Saraburi | Saraburi, Thailand | Seasonal farm work |
| Guardians of Borneo | Sabah, Malaysia | Wildlife recovery, plastic waste |
| Marine Life Conservation | Huizhou, China | Turtle care, beach pollution |
| Blue Zones, Conservation and Culture | Okinawa, Japan | Coral reef recovery |
Your school’s CAS coordinator sets the details, such as how many reflections you need and how evidence is logged.
CAS Project Ideas by Strand
You don’t need a hundred ideas, just one that fits a real need and survives a busy term. These seven work alone or as the backbone of a trip.
Creativity
A short documentary series filmed over several weeks with a partner organization. Our Borneo program builds this in: student teams draft a vlog plan on the first day, film their conservation work, and present it before flying home.
A mural for a community space, painted from a brief written by the people who use it.
Activity
A multi-day cycling or hiking route, planned and trained for as a team, including route research, a training schedule, and basic bike maintenance.
A weekly session that tackles a shared fear, such as climbing. The IB itself uses rock climbing as an example of a worthwhile activity project.
Service
A collection drive for a partner school or charity, starting with a conversation about what they actually need.
An upcycling workshop at school, modeled on a recycling project students have seen working elsewhere.
A tutoring or conversation program for a local community group, running weekly for at least a month.
Can a School Trip Be a CAS Project?
A school trip cannot be a CAS Project on its own, but it can be built into one. Most school trips last five to ten days, which is shorter than the one-month minimum, and the itinerary is usually built by teachers and a provider rather than by students. The trip works best as the action stage of a project that students start weeks before departure and finish after they return.
Three versions tend to get pushed back by CAS coordinators:
The trip days are presented as the whole project. Without planning and follow-up, there is no month.
Fundraising for your own trip is logged as service. Money raised for a partner organization is service. Money that pays for your flight is not.
Students arrive with no role in the planning. If the provider chose everything, students can only reflect on what happened to them, not on decisions they made.
How to Turn a School Trip Into a CAS Project
Split the project into three phases and map each one to the five CAS stages: investigation, preparation, action, reflection, and demonstration.
A trip usually covers the action stage. Planning and follow-up make up the rest of the month.
Before the Trip: Planning and Fundraising
This covers investigation and preparation, and it usually starts four to eight weeks before departure. Students should:
Research the partner and the community need. For Jeju, that meant finding out what the horse sanctuary and Tamara Republic asks volunteers to do and why.
Split roles. Assign a route planner, budget lead, communications lead, and reflection lead.
Set goals they can measure, such as distance covered or materials collected for the partner.
Direct any fundraising to the partner organization, not to trip costs.
Our guide to pre-trip learning design covers the academic side of this phase.
On the Trip
This is the action stage. On Jeju, students started with a bicycle maintenance session and a hike at Yongduam on day 1. On days 2 and 3, they cycled multiple 15 to 25 km sessions along the coast. Day 4 was spent volunteering at a horse sanctuary and on community service with Tamara Republic, which continued the final morning.
Planning roles carried into the trip: the route planner briefed the group each morning, and the reflection lead ran the evening debrief using prompts like those in our guide to designing reflection frameworks.
Volunteering at the OurLandOurHorses sanctuary on Day 4.
Back at School: Follow-Up and Demonstration
This final stage is what ties the project together and turns a good trip into lasting learning. Within two weeks of returning, students should:
Hold a group reflection that compares their pre-trip goals with what happened.
Show what they did to an audience: an assembly, a short film or a written report.
Report back to the partner with photos, results or a follow-up donation.
Case Study: BWYA’s Jeju Cycling Adventure
The Jeju Cycling Adventure ran over five days and four nights for students, flying from Beijing to Jeju. We built it around three goals: environmental stewardship, cultural immersion, and physical and mental resilience. The table shows how each activity can support a CAS strand and learning outcome.
| Activity | CAS Strand | Learning Outcome |
|---|---|---|
| Bicycle maintenance session | Activity | Demonstrate that challenges have been undertaken, developing new skills |
| Coastal cycling, up to 50 km a day | Activity | Show commitment to and perseverance in CAS experiences |
| Volunteering at a horse sanctuary | Service | Demonstrate the skills and recognize the benefits of working collaboratively |
| Community service with Tamara Republic | Service | Demonstrate engagement with issues of global significance |
| Pre-trip route and role planning | Project planning | Demonstrate how to initiate and plan a CAS experience |
Cultural stops mattered too. Students ate at a restaurant owned by Haenyeo, the women divers who harvest shellfish without breathing equipment and whose culture is recognized by UNESCO as intangible cultural heritage. A meal is not a CAS experience in itself, but it gave students first-hand material for the global engagement outcome.
Haenyeo diver on Jeju, whose culture students explored on Day 2.
Planning a Trip-Based CAS Project With Your School
Before confirming a trip as a CAS project, CAS coordinators can check six things:
Does the project, including planning and follow-up, run for at least a month?
Did students help choose the partner and the need?
Does every student have a named role?
Where does any money raised go?
How will students report back to the partner?
Which learning outcomes will students evidence, and how?
If you’d like to build your next trip around a student-led CAS project, Beyond Classrooms can design the itinerary around your students’ planning rather than in place of it. Please contact our team for more information.