By Matt Coles
Helping others has always been at the heart of the International Baccalaureate curriculum, giving Northbridge International School Cambodia students the opportunity to engage with the world around them and develop both empathy and the organizational skills necessary to make a change in their world.
Unfortunately, Covid 19 curtailed the ability of our students to be involved in community programs to help those in need. With the relaxation of restrictions our students’ enthusiasm for helping others has quickly come back to the fore.
These projects have come in various shapes and sizes. Some of them involve working with old partners that have established relationships with Northbridge dating back to before the pandemic, such as those with PPAWS, the animal charity.
Other projects involve forging new relationships, such as the one being pioneered by our grade eleven students with Habitat for Humanity: a leading international organization specializing in providing quality housing to underprivileged families. This has led to an exciting upcoming project in December.
Our students will be donating their time and effort to paint houses built by Habitat for Humanity. But it doesn’t stop there, Northbridge is already discussing the possibility of future collaboration with Habitat for Humanity. Next year we hope our students will be painting houses that have been funded entirely through the efforts of our students.
Of course, our students care deeply about each other and one area of growth during the pandemic was mental health. Many of our students undertook projects during Covid designed to help each other through challenging times. These efforts have formalized in the A Place to be Yourself group and the RU OK group.
Taken together this is a wonderful start to the 2022-23 school year and the future of Service Learning at Northbridge. Who knows what the 2023-24 academic year will bring.
In the Primary Years Programme (PYP), including at Northbridge International School Cambodia, 'action' is considered to be both an application of learning and an opportunity for students to engage in a form of contribution or service.
