We are delighted to share a blog written by student Minjoon Kim from Seoul Foreign British School, who is part of a team delivering a Global Goals project for the 2019-20 Global Goals Competition.
Their project is among over 957 social action projects currently running as part of the GSL movement and we are excited to be supporting them to design and lead positive social change in their community.
Project A-Bridge is very close to all of our hearts, as third culture children, and it is very meaningful to us that we can help bring our community closer together through our project.
Project Overview
Our project name is A-Bridge. We named it A-Bridge since our project is about making the transition bridges short and sweet.
The aim of project A-Bridge is to create a transition website that will help to decrease the stress levels of students who are transitioning in and out of KS3. We realized that new students took some time to adjust to our community and we would like to help them have an easier start in our school. As most of us are third culture kids, children who grow up in a culture that is not their own or their parents, this project is how we want to help others in situations similar to ours. We have all been the “new kids” at various schools, and want to help those who are in the same position as we had been in by making them feel welcome before they even step into our school. Third culture kids are more likely to have increased levels of stress and anxiety, on top of the stress levels here in Korea being higher than average.
Our transition website is a place that students can get useful tips about how to navigate our school, use the technology and sign up for extracurricular activities. They can even make a connection to students already at the school, to show them that it is okay for them to open up to us and build relationships, to foster a sense of belonging and assure them that it is okay to have more than one culture that they can call “home”.
Our Journey
By participating in the GSL Global Goals Competition, we have learned to be able to work as a team, every group member participating and contributing equally. We also learned how to communicate with students or teachers we are not too familiar with, as well as our group members. This meant having to overcome our fears of speaking to other people that we do not know well and reaching out to new people for help and support. And through communication, we realized being collaborative was another formidable obstacle in the way. We had to actively seek opportunities to work with other groups, linking each global goal to another.
Our biggest challenge currently would be contacting and working together through the COVID-19 pandemic. Even though we have all the technology and applications for our aid, it would not be as effective as physically meeting and working. We plan to overcome this challenge through often meeting through applications such as Zoom or Google Meet, and reaching out to people in our school such as our school counsellor and our homeroom teacher.
The Next Chapter
We would recommend trying GSL projects to others our age. We have already spoken to many rising 5th grade students about the different GSL projects our school has done this year and last year, including ours. We have had positive responses from the teachers and students, who encouraged us to keep up with the work. We believe that this small project may become a legacy to the middle school years where they could experience putting their work on the website. Our call to action would be for uprising y9s to have fun building the legacy we have left behind.
The 2019-20 GSL Global Goals Competition is now open and runs until June 2020. If you belong to one of the 700+ teams of students currently delivering a social action project as part of the competition we would love to hear from you and feature your blog and project photos on our website to inspire others.
