The Opening Minds, Opening Lives (OMOL) project is a social enterprise that is currently being run as a collaboration between IB students at BISS Puxi and NAIS Pudong.
The project was initiated three years ago with the objective of providing a bespoke English curriculum for over 400 physically and mentally challenged children at Nan Yang Orphanage in Henan province. The OMOL project is one way through which our students demonstrate NAE’s “Be ambitious” philosophy as well as a clear testimony of how they uphold the IB Learner Profile attributes of being caring, principled and risk-taking learners.
In recognition of the expected positive impact on the local community, the project was awarded funds by NAE’s Charitable Giving Committee that will enable them to widen their community outreach. In the words of the Charitable Giving Committee, “Your project has a clear purpose that has been identified through sustained collaboration with Nan Yang Orphanage. You have identified an effective and sustainable way to support the wellbeing and educational development of the orphans and the Committee is motivated to support your work on this”.
This year, the OMOL team has identified a partner organisation, Learn-Will Suzhou, that supports autistic children to make the best of learning opportunities and exploit their talents. On Monday 2 October, eight BISS Puxi members of the OMOL team accompanied by two of their counterparts from NAIS Pudong went on a fact-finding mission to Suzhou with the aim of identifying the needs of the children that their project could address over the coming year. The trip was an immense success as our students had the opportunity to spend an afternoon of fun and games with the children and their parents, which included a joint birthday celebration for those children born in September and October.
