Remodelled Gymnasium at TIS - The Third Teacher

Community Service >> Connecting Communities: Yokohama Int’l School and Second Harvest

By Ms. Sarah Urquhart Secondary Teacher and Service Learning Coordinator (urquharts@yis.ac.jp)

When students were presented with the Personal Project opportunity as part of their final year in the IB Middle Years Programme, grade 10 student Hana Chapman knew that she wanted to use the opportunity to make a meaningful difference. Hana had previous experience volunteering on weekends and holidays with a Tokyo-based food bank organization, Second Harvest and became familiar with the work and needs of this growing NGO in Japan. Second Harvest runs several programmes to support individuals, families and children’s homes in the Yokohama and Tokyo areas that struggle with food security. As a bilingual student, Hana’s fluency in Japanese and English was a natural fit as she focused her Personal Project to help Second Harvest translate some of their promotional and outreach communications between English and Japanese to increase Second Harvest’s abilities to expand their reach. Hana Chapman.

Hana also looked to increase her own reach within the Secondary School at Yokohama International School. She wanted to make her classmates more aware of the needs that exist within Japanese society, especially as these are easily overlooked in countries like Japan that are more economically-developed. Hana reached out to me as the Secondary Service Learning Coordinator and we decided that a good way to raise awareness about the needs and mission of Second Harvest would be through participating in their seasonal “Adopt a Family” food drive campaign. Many children from families that live below the poverty line rely on school lunches to meet their nutritional needs and experience hunger and malnourishment during extended school holidays. While the “Adopt a Family” initiative was not directly related to Hana’s personal project, it was an excellent extension to involve more YIS students and increase the contribution that would benefit more people in need.

The YIS pastoral care Tutor groups were a natural fit for this within both the Middle and High School and through Hana’s organization, Tutor groups were invited to participate by ‘adopting a family’ and preparing a food parcel to be delivered. Within each tutor group, students divided up the suggested item list to bring in essential foods such as rice, pasta, cooking oil, miso, tea, etc. that a family would need for a week. Students are currently in the process of collecting these items and parcels will be mailed to their adopted families on December 8th 2018. Each food parcel will also contain something special like chocolates along with a card and note from YIS students to express their holiday greetings and well wishes. In total, 22 families will experience less hunger and food insecurity over the 2017-2018 new year’s holiday in the Tokyo and Yokohama areas because of Yokohama International School’s involvement and Hana’s leadership.

In Hana’s words, she hopes that the parcels will “raise awareness about issues of poverty within Japan and also help the families who need it”. Hana also has the long term vision to expand YIS’ involvement with Second Harvest by establishing a regular service group within the secondary school. Hana’s Personal Project and the “Adopt-a-Family” initiatives are just the start of another partnership that will connect YIS students to amazing local organizations looking to make people’s lives better.

Middle School Art Celebration

Chiang Mai International School, Thailand (Left) Sun Jin Back, Grade 6, Local butterflies, contrast or camouflage. Watercolors.