Duke of Edinburgh Update

I am very pleased with the start our Duke of Edinburgh participants have made this year with Year 10 beginning their Bronze Award and our nine Silver participants continuing their journey through the youth leadership scheme.

Our Bronze participants are doing their Community Service section within school and are busy running Primary ECAs on Thursdays. The feedback from the teachers and TAs is hugely positive as they learn how to plan, teach and reflect on the sessions they lead.

For the Silver participants, all their Community Service section will be done outside of school. Our pupils are growing links to local charities and developing ways in which they can contribute through their work ethic, skills and talents to benefit those in our society that need a helping hand.

As leader of Hue, our house has adopted the Operation Smile charity as our official charity and our links with Operation Smile began to grow after the magnificent effort our house members put into the Christmas Fair last year, when we raised an impressive amount of money for the charity. This week Miss Thuan from Operation Smile kindly came into to school to run a session with our Duke of Edinburgh Silver participants, with the aim of growing our involvement with the charity.

On December 5th Operation Smile are holding their 23rd Gala Dinner and charity auction at the Sofitel Plaza in Hanoi. Miss Thuan has invited our pupils to be involved in staffing the dinner for Operation Smile. In addition, she has given our Silver participants the opportunity to make and present donations to patients as well as go into the Vietnam/Cuba Hospital as non-medical volunteers. Furthermore, some of our participants will get the chance to provide translation services for a team of surgeons sponsored by the American multinational company, Johnson & Johnson.

Mr Nicholas Chaddock - EAL Teacher & Duke of Edinburgh Coordinator