Community collaboration: Why it is so important

Community collaboration is an important part of service learning at our schools. We trace its origins back to Wellington College in England. Central to it is the recognition that most children who attend Wellington College China schools enjoy a lot of privilege in life. We therefore must instil in them a sense of responsibility to those who are less privileged than they are. School is the best time to do this. Children have an immense bandwidth for compassion. They are more accepting of people who are different to them. By incorporating service learning into our curriculum, we are helping our pupils build powerful habits of Kindness and Responsibility that will endure long after they graduate and go out into the world. 

As such, we expect our pupils to be engaged and to invest time and effort in those who need their help. At Wellington College Tianjin, for instance, we have the Eric Liddell Project, which takes its name from the famed Scottish Olympic runner and missionary who was born in Tianjin. Every academic year, our Senior School pupils choose a community outreach project to work on. In its first year, they worked with a school for disabled children in Tianjin. Their efforts culminated in a day-long camp for the school’s pupils, parents and teachers. Our pupils organised activities around sport, art, music and drama for these children. It was an opportunity to connect and find commonality with children their own age who may not enjoy the same advantages they do.  More recently, our Tianjin pupils have been working with Educating Rural Girls of China, an organisation that provides high school education, university and internship opportunities for young women in underserved areas of the country. 

At Wellington College International Shanghai, our pupils, parents and teachers work closely with some wonderful charities. Just recently, they raised RMB 50,000 for Stepping Stones, an organisation that provides supplies and resources to underserved schools in the Shanghai area. The College also regularly works with Heart to Heart, which raises funds to provide corrective surgery for children with congenital heart problems.  

Our pupils at Hiba Academy Shanghai have been active in several charity initiatives recently. Last academic year, they invited children from the Fudu School for Children with Disabilities to share together in several enriching sports and cultural activities. Through their pupil-led grant-making programme, they have been raising money for From the Mountain, a charity organisation that aims to preserve China’s rich ethnic minority culture. They are also working to make mental health services more available to children of migrant workers in rural areas. Moreover, this year, Hiba Shanghai is expanding its charity efforts with new initiatives like its Spark Charity and Charity Empowerment Projects, which will provide even more opportunities for pupils to interface with their community.   

Moreover, at our Hiba campus in Hangzhou, pupils are working to raise money to reforest Inner Mongolia. Their current goal is to raise RMB 25,000 for this effort. They are also working with the Hangzhou Yiyou Public Welfare organization, to raise awareness of left-behind children and provide them with school supplies, toys and clothes.