Nord Anglia Social Impact Award with UNICEF
The NAE Social Impact Award with UNICEF was first launched in 2021 and is currently piloting in select schools. The philosophy is based on the UNICEF UK Rights Respecting Schools Award, but the NAE Education team have worked directly with UNICEF to develop this award specifically for international schools. Firstly, the award now combines children’s rights with the UN Sustainable Development Goals. This combined focus will not only help our students understand their own rights, but also enable them to become empowered changemakers who can help other children around the world access their rights and have a better quality of life. In the Social Impact Award, UNICEF and NAE have also incorporated elements of international mindedness to help our students develop the skills needed to work in highly international and diverse situations. The award celebrates equality and diversity in international schools and uses children’s rights as a basis for intercultural understanding.
The Social Impact Award has 3 strands:
- Learning about rights and goals: our students learn about the UN Convention on the Rights of the child and the UN Sustainable Development Goals and think about how these apply to their own lives and the situations of other children around the world.
- Learning through rights: we put children’s rights at the heart of our school community to help promote positive behaviour, respectful relationships and intercultural understanding.
- Learning for rights: our students use their knowledge of rights and goals to positively influence our school community, through student voice, advocating for goals and rights in the wider community and helping other children access their rights.
The Social Impact Award at PBIS:
PBIS is a pilot schools for the award and one of the very first schools in the world to achieve to achieve Bronze accreditation, meaning we are rights committed. To achieve the Bronze award, we developed a plan of action to ensure that rights and goals are key to everything we do. Our school already has a long-standing collaboration with UNICEF and many parts of our curriculum and extra-curricula activities focus on rights and goals. In our plan, we have aimed to make this more consistent across our school and ensure that social impact a key part of everything we do. The next step for PBIS is to put this plan into action in preparation for Silver accreditation.