On April 15th, representing the Léman International School Chengdu, Mr. Robert Dolan, the Deputy Head of Primary, attended the Child Friendly organized by the Tianfu New Area. He introduced the inclusive service available to students including EAL, SEN support, well-being and student pastoral service at our school. Followed, a child-friendly carnival was hosted in Luxelake and it was successfully concluded thanks to the efforts of the Léman community. The event focused heavily on the young generation, as emphasized by the SDGs, and was similar to a bazaar.
Our secondary students participated in the event to provide the young children with enjoyable experiences and information about SDGs that can be helpful for their future.
During the event, Jenny and Hazel from Year 10 and some of Year 11 students organized an activity using a traditional Korean game, called "ddakji," where we attached SDGs goals to each piece of ddakji, and the first person to flip over the opponent's ddakji by hitting it with their own would win.
Hazel and Jenny with some help from Year 11 students, conducted another activity where participants used pictures to create their own stories related to SDGs, which resulted in some very creative and innovative stories. This was one of the activities that UNICEF recommended on their official page that can improve children’s creativity and expression.
In addition, some of the Year 12 students conducted a fundraising event for the 4 charities that our school has been supporting for a long time, by selling Korean street food and bakery items. The food was so popular that we ran out of ingredients. Some other Year 12 students also sold donated items from students to raise funds for the 4 charities.
Although the weather was extremely hot on the event day, for more than 3 hours, all of the students and teachers were very passionate and encouraging. It was a grateful and valuable memory for me and Hazel to get a great opportunity to participate in this carnival event as a representative of the 2023 NAE-UNICEF Student Summit in Léman this summer. This carnival event was a preparation step for us to gain some influential experience for the NY summit, which will happen in July, in New York. NY-Summit is looking forward to supporting the sustainable development goal to send a message to the world leaders and local community about how they can support our world to be a better place for all. What sustainable development goal is emphasizing is the young generation, the next leader of the world. They believe that the young generation is the key to an advanced future, where all people’s peace and prosperity are ensured. To achieve this goal, not only us, but the children should be also aware of the issues and SDG to be the next global leader.
Thus, we attempted to raise children’s awareness and bring some recognition of SDG. The ddakji activity and the mini-poster we prepared all contained information about SDG, hence, we strongly believe it contributed to the enhancement of children’s understanding of the world's betterment. Perhaps in the future, those children can be the ones who spread the positive impact on the world with this experience that we provided.
Overall, the event was successful in spreading awareness of SDGs to the young generation and providing them with enjoyable experiences. We hope that events like this will continue to inspire and empower the young generation to contribute towards sustainable development and a better future. We were glad to see children and parents enjoying and giving a lot of attention to our event on Saturday, thanks again to all the students volunteers, teachers, children and parents who made an amazing day for all of us!
(Article written by the UNICEF student representative Jenny K.)
