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Global Issues Network Project In recent years, the education of girls and women has received a lot of attention as a way forward for many problems in our world. At the American International School of Guangzhou in southern China, this awareness has resulted in the creation of a scholarship program to support young women in our local area that is not only wildly successful but largely student-driven. Three years ago, soon after I joined the faculty of AISG, I was invited to help support a project that sponsors sixty local Chinese students to complete their high school education in a highly ranked boarding school in the Shao Guan area of Southern China. My role as a faculty chaperone, as it was explained to me, was to travel to the school with a group of about a dozen students from our Global Issues Network (GIN), and help support the weekend of relationship building between our students and the young women being sponsored. Actually, I did pretty much nothing. As the other faculty chaperones and I stood back and watched, the GIN members facilitated a program that included games, English learning, visits to senior care homes, singing, and friendship. The students had also organized guest speakers, including young women who had been through the scholarship program and were now studying at university. In the end, the adults on the trip just enjoyed watching this incredibly dynamic group of local and international students and did the curfew calls back at the hotel in the evening. The local students I met that weekend would have completed their formal schooling at the end of middle school were it not for the financial and moral support provided by our school community. Through the support of GIN, all sixty students have been successfully staying in school, with the majority exceling in their studies. Asked about why so many students have shown such a high level of commitment to this project, former GIN coordinator So Yun Chang pointed to the fact that it is student driven: “I firmly believe that 12 EARCOS Triannual Journal
everyone in the group is there because they want to dedicate their time and passion to serving these Shao Guan girls. Members at GIN aren’t spending one and a half hours every Friday afternoon in Mr Little’s room just so they have something to put on their college application. Everyone understands the effect our program has had on the Shao Guan girls, and everyone has a clear, respectable incentive to be part of GIN.” The club’s faculty sponsor, Eric Little, says he agrees that this is an exceptionally student-driven project and attributes this to a number of factors. Little believes that students in past years were motivated by attendance at GIN conferences that highlighted the issues of girl’s education and child labor. Little also noted that the older students in the group make a concerted effort to mentor the freshmen students in the group. Last year, one of the students even received the prestigious EARCOS award as a result of the commitment she had poured into this project. In September, 2017, our coordinators and Eric Little traveled to Shao Guan to receive an award for their work from the local Department of Education. While watching these students, both local and international, in the classrooms and on the fields of the Shao Guan campus, I can only agree with Eric Little as he gazes at these students in action and declares: “You can’t believe what students can do if you just let them!” Julie Lindsay High School Counselor American International School of Guangzhou
