Justin Alexander
justina@isb.ac.th
Dear Parents,
Thank you for entrusting your children to us during Global Citizenship week. As you read this article many of our trips will have returned to Bangkok and I hope that you will have had a chance to chat to your children and to hear about their experiences and their thoughts on their particular GCW trip or experience.
There are many wonderful opportunities presented to our students during GCW week and this year I was fortunate enough to see many of our students (your children) in action over the past few days up in the Chiangmai region where four of our trips were based. Traveling with GCW supremo (and HS Dean of Students) Andy Vaughan we managed to meet up with four different student groups over the past few days. We ‘helped’ our Habitat for Humanity students build a house in the rural countryside, we stayed overnight at the Panya Project (a permaculture education center and commune) that was started more than 12 years ago by an ex ISB student, we visited our students volunteering and working at the Elephant Nature Park and then finally on Thursday afternoon we joined 13 students at the Lisu Lodge on their tea plantation visit followed by a sports afternoon at a local school where we donated a large amount of sports equipment to grateful students. Andy Vaughan was also able to spend some time on Tuesday in Udon Thani at the Rice Fields project who do wonderful work with the local community in many different ways.
In all instances, our students were respectful, happy and willing to help out, roll up their sleeves and be involved in the experiences and interactions at each location. Our teachers willingly spend their whole week supervising, supporting and looking after our students whilst working alongside them in various service activities and work and I thank them all from the bottom of my heart for the great work that they do.
Enjoy the long weekend and we look forward to hearing more stories about the wonderful experiences from all the trips in the weeks ahead. You can see some of the trip photos on our HS Instagram page and on the ISB Facebook page as well.
Regards
Justin Alexander
High School Principal