We are delighted to share a blog written by Liam Alexander Jones, a student at British School Jakarta who is part of a team delivering a Global Goals project for the 2018-19 Global Goals Competition.
Their project is among over 800 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 Overview
We started working with the Bina Yatim dan Dhuafa orphanage almost 4 years ago. When we started we didn’t really know what they needed or how we could help them. We soon figured out, however, that what they really wanted was to learn English and to play games with them, and so that’s what we did.
We started going every week to teach basic English and play games with them in their orphanage. Since we started the IB program and made this a CAS project though, we’ve started having sessions in our school, using our schools facilities and classrooms to play ball games outdoors and to teach English to the kids in an indoors class setting.
Our Journey
We have developed lots of skills during this journey; our time management, ways to teach and talk to children, how to plan out lessons and lots more. These are skills that we will use in the future and this opportunity to have this experience is truly amazing. We learnt that, even if we aren’t teachers and don’t have any professional training, we can still make a difference and help improve others lives.
The biggest challenge we face though is keeping the kids engaged with the English. They definitely enjoy playing games more and so we have tried playing more games and including a bit of English. What would be good would be to increase the range of things we do with the kids, like doing more organized sport games or maybe we could start doing theatre with the kids which could integrate English and fun.
Moving forward we just need to keep coming up with ways the keep the kids engaged and find resources of ways to do this so they can have fun but also get some learning out of it.
An insightful, rewarding and reflective experience that has brought immense joy and a sense of acomplishment.
The Next Chapter
I would suggest this to anyone who enjoys helping kids and loves teaching. Interacting with the kids and seeing them grow and learn along with you and watching them have fun is an incredibly rewarding experience. Also the feeling of getting to help people in need and getting to expose them to arts and language and see them smile as they get to be creative and have fun which, for some of them, is something they might not get to do a lot of the day.
That great feeling of getting to help others is coupled with the skills that you can learn from doing a project like this. You learn to be a better organizer and planner and to carefully consider how you interact with others. Moving forward we are going to take all of that that we have learnt and continue to teach and play with the kids, but also to help with the kids living conditions and try and make improvements to their housing. We may not be changing the world, but we are changing someone’s world.
The 2018-19 GSL Global Goals Competition is now open and runs until June 2019. 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.
