ES Community Engagement

AIDEN AND JOLENE ABOUT OPERATION THERMOS

The ISB Communications Team had the opportunity to interview Grade 6 students Aiden and Jolene about their Service Learning Project Operation Thermos.

What can you tell us about yourselves as a short introduction?

My name is Jolene and I am in 6th grade. I like drama and I am in the ES Student Council. My name is Aiden and I am a human �� I’ve been at ISB for 7 years, and I love recess, the cafeteria, dessert day, and gaming.

What can you tell us about Operation Thermos?

Aiden: Operation Thermos is a non-profit organisation that started in the 1980s. It was founded by scouts who went to the train station and saw many homeless people, and the next day they came back to give them food, for example soup in thermos bottles. They started a routine of going every night and helping more and more people In this project we fed around 200 people

Why did you decide to participate in this service learning opportunity?

Jolene & Aiden: We had many choices as part of our Human Rights studies Operation Thermos is connected to Human Rights because homeless people are not receiving the right to housing and property To choose a group, we rated all the options on a scale from first to least wanted option, and Operation Thermos was our first choice Then you got placed in a group with other students who also chose this project and with one or two teachers who instructed us about what we will do to help people. The other options were the KIVA project, a project about girls’ involvement in sports, a project helping people coming from abroad settle in Belgium, and one project giving sanitary aid to homeless people (which was also quite similar to Operation Thermos).

Jolene: I chose this particular project because I like cooking and you had to prepare food for people who need it I thought it was inspiring to physically go to a metro station and give it to them in person For me the direct interaction was very important and very rewarding I liked that you could go to the metro and meet the people you were helping and they could meet us too When we went to other metro stations afterwards, we saw some of the people again and they recognised us and were happy to see us again The only sad thing was that we couldn’t help more than 200 people. I think more of these initiatives are needed to help more people

Aiden: I liked that we could learn how to cook different foods, because I did not know much about cooking. And I wanted to help the community and to share with others the things we are very lucky to have but sometimes take for granted.

Why do you think it is important that students participate in community engagement initiatives?

Aiden: I think it’s important to participate because you won’t learn unless you try new things. It’s good to learn about the outside world and about the things that could go wrong We learned about some of the things that can lead to homelessness and what options there are for people who become homeless, for example where they can go for meals or to sleep

Jolene: Once you do it you get a different perspective on the world, because you see how easy it is for everything to go wrong It shows you how sometimes life is not really fair, and it teaches us what we can do to help.

Do you feel that these experiences influence your education and learning at ISB? How?

Aiden: This experience really taught me a lot about homelessness, by giving us practical examples of how people live from night to night not knowing when their next meal will be. It made us more aware of people and how we can take initiative, instead of just ignoring the homeless people we see in the city. Also, learning how to cook is a very good practical skill to have as an adult.

Jolene: I think it also reminds us that other people have less than us It’s good to have that reminder because it helps you see how lucky we are to have access to important things like our homes and our school

Do you think these experiences will influence your future studies or choices after finishing school?

Aiden: I think such experiences help us consider how to build our future careers to continue helping people.

Jolene: This is something I would like to continue to do in my free time because it is very rewarding These types of experiences can make the people you help want to help others as well, once they manage to make it out of the homelessness cycle and can afford to help others to get out of homelessness too

JENAMI & SKYLAR ABOUT KIVA

The ISB Communications Team had the opportunity to talk with ES students, Jenami and Skylar, about the KIVA Project – their Grade 6 Service Learning Project The Kiva platform enables users to provide microloans to people in need of financial support Each year, ISB 6 graders get a total 1000 EUR to lend through the KIVA initiative

What can you tell us about the KIVA project and your involvement in it?

The KIVA project was our Service Learning Project We had to research people on the KIVA website and we could lend money to them and eventually, in our case after one year, they would pay us back. We could decide who we wanted to lend the money to, depending on their situation and what they needed the money for, and how much money we would lend to them, between 25 to 100 EUR

Why have you chosen the KIVA project as part of your Human Rights Project?

At the beginning of this Social Studies unit, we got to vote for our favorite topic, and both of us had the KIVA group as our first choice We thought it was really cool to learn about how crowdfunding and microfinancing can be used to help people It was interesting to learn how to handle money and we had to make good decisions regarding our funds It’s something that we might want to do when we grow older, to have a KIVA account and use our own money to help people directly

Can you give us some examples of some of the initiatives or people you chose to help with your loans?

You can decide to finance an initiative or an individual person, based on your preference For example, if you wanted to support a farming project, you could search for food initiatives and see a list of people in need of funds for farming projects You can read through everyone’s story and choose one that you think is good. We could also help individual people, for example single parents who needed money to pay for day-to-day things like their bills

Is there anything else that you think people should know about KIVA?

KIVA is something that everyone can do very easily. Anyone can open an account and can decide where their contributions can go, and since it’s a loan, everyone gets their money back You are helping people without having to make a personal sacrifice, because the money gets paid back to you (and you can use it again to help someone else!) By browsing through people’s profiles and stories, you can see for how long they need the money, so you can even choose when you would like to receive your money back We had a limit of one year, so next year the 6 graders can reuse the money they lent this year.