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Written by: Gracie (Year 11), Fi (Year 11), Kate (Year 12), Pita (Year 12), and Miae (Year 11)
Service learning is at the heart of our school values, and this project embodies that perfectly. Through our partnership with Bangkok Community Help Foundation (BCHF), we have seen how real-world experiences can deepen our learning and inspire lasting change.
We saw this firsthand while volunteering at the Bangkok Community Help Foundation (BCHF) food distribution centre, where we helped prepare and deliver meals to families in the Khlong Toey community. It was a powerful experience that made us realise how many people depend on this support every day. We began to ask ourselves: How can we support this initiative more sustainably?
That question inspired Green Giving Gardens STA, a project to build two sustainable gardens: one at our St Andrews High School and one in the Khlong Toei area. These gardens will grow fresh produce for BCHF’s daily food programme.
To bring this project to life, we applied to Nord Anglia’s Social Impact Grants programme, which supports student-led initiatives that tackle real-world issues aligned with the Sustainable Development Goals, and won a grant worth 300,000 baht.
Some may think this project would benefit only the STA community, but we are proud to prove them wrong! Applying for this grant opens multiple doors for our community to support families most in need who are currently living in the Khlong Toei area, which is considered the largest and oldest slum in Bangkok.
With this garden, we will be able to provide and donate our fresh, nutritious, home-grown crops to the food distribution programme of the Bangkok Community Help Foundation (BCHF), with whom we have been partnering since 2020. Not only will this be a means of supporting communities in Klong Toei, but the Green Giving Gardens can also serve as the foundation for introducing these real-world problems to students at STA, broadening their perspectives on the different realities others experience.
We also have the benefit of learning more about crop cultivation, as we will be working closely with the community gardeners in Khlong Toei.
It also allowed us to develop a collaboration between our STA community and Lock 456 (Khlong Toei), which also partners with BCHF and focuses on several initiatives, including housing improvements. For example, BCHF and Lock 456 rebuilt homes for families, providing safer and more dignified living spaces. Uniting our communities and ultimately offering a helping hand to them, as well as to us, greatly supports families who are unable to afford everyday necessities such as food.
“Leading” this project was not about telling the team what to do, but instead seeing each other as equals and, in short, combining our skills and knowledge to complete this project to the absolute best of our abilities.
Communication is an essential part of being a team, although sometimes we can forget that listening is just as important. As a team, you are required to join forces and collaborate together. In order to do this, it is crucial that you are able to listen and understand your team members’ points of view. Additionally, being able to form relationships with external people other than your team was important to receive the support that is necessary.
Problem-solving was a necessary part of this project, pushing us to work together to make quick decisions and find solutions under pressure.
Time management and responsibility are the last two important traits a team should have. Effectively collaborating and meeting deadlines can be difficult at times, though it is important that every team member looks out for each other, as your end goal constantly remains the same.
Our project shows the importance of giving back to the community. As students, we are becoming more aware of the impact our actions can have beyond the school environment. Reflecting on our experience with the Bangkok Community Help Foundation (BCHF), we have gained a deeper understanding of how impactful and important these contributions are for our community.
As our project involves transferring grown crops from our STA Green Garden to the Khlong Toei slum, it provides them directly to households or to the BCHF, supporting the BCHF's Food Program to provide nutritious meals for underprivileged residents. This allows accessibility to healthier alternatives in their area, directly addressing the community’s critical needs for food. We aim to improve the community’s well-being through collaborative efforts.
Our project also involves establishing another garden in the Khlong Toei area, where locals and students from STA can work together to learn to grow crops within the community. We believe that gardening and agriculture could be strong tools that create jobs for people, providing a source of income for many who are struggling in the community.
This community involvement provides students with opportunities to strengthen their core values, as giving fosters a sense of purpose and encourages them to reflect on local social challenges, such as food security and unequal resource distribution. This allows our students to acquire hands-on experiences with the local community, where they learn the importance of sharing resources and actively supporting the wider community to preserve the environment we live in.
