Middle School Community Engagement
The Middle School Community Engagement (MSCE) program has entered its second year at Concordian. Throughout the academic year, Grades 6-8 students are able to select communities to visit during Wednesday shortened day afternoons, and/or on Saturday mornings. The communities include elderly homes, child care centers, public schools, and nature education centers. In addition to locations visited last year, we also expanded our community partners to include new locations, such as the Bang Pu Recreation Center and the Foundation for Slum Child Care, Khlong Toei branch.
Through these trips, middle school students have the opportunity to explore a variety of communities that are in close proximity to school, to discover these communities and the people who belong to them, and to explore what types of service activities could be of benefit to them. Beyond that, students are able to actively engage with these neighboring communities to develop empathy and a sense of social responsibility.
With this foundation established in middle school, students are able to carry on these experiences with them to serve as inspiration for the more independent, high-level service projects they will go on to lead in future years. In this way, the MSCE program lays the foundation for Secondary School Community Engagement at Concordian.
Community Engagement Spotlight: From MSCE to Club Project
One of the communities regularly visited on the MSCE program is the elderly home at Wattananiwad Foundation. A high school club, “Wishing Well”, whose purpose is to promote and support wellbeing in elders, embarked on a project to design an improved set of board games that middle-schoolers use to interact with the elderly during their MSCE visits. Some club members even experienced visiting the community first-hand during their own MSCE trips last year.
Mr. Ben, Service Coordinator & Mr. Jay, Service Liaison
