October 2015

As part of The Reading Tree’s mission to establish a transferable English reading curriculum to support learning environments in the local and global community, we are purchasing class sets of books. This reading curriculum will be used at the Basis Education Primary School in Bagan, Myanmar during the upcoming CAS week trip in mid November.

In order to raise funds to purchase these books, The Reading Tree hosted a Canadian Thanksgiving card sale from October 8th to 12th. This sale was not purely a fundraising effort but also encouraged our school community (students and teachers alike!) to thank each other for hard work, commitment, and guidance. The campaign was successful in sharing appreciation throughout our school community. This experience also showed us areas we could strengthen our skills as a GIN club in order to improve the quality and success of future campaigns.

Habitat for Humanity at CDNIS’ Paint Your Glove Event took place in late September this year and lasted for a total of five days. Lower School students from Prep to Grade 6 were invited to sign up to decorate their own glove, which will be sent away to be used on a real HFH build site. The annual event raises awareness for Habitat for Humanity and the issue of substandard housing and the proceeds are used to subsidize CDNIS’ international build trips. The money from this year’s PYG went to sending upper school students to the Philippines for a 5-day build trip, where they transported thousands of bricks and built the walls of several houses. Students got the opportunity to interact with locals from the village and see first-hand, the impact they were making. Overall, this was an incredibly successful fundraiser that raised over $30,000 HKD for Habitat for Humanity’s CDNIS Campus Chapter and we would like to thank all the parents, staff, and students that made this event possible.

Click the link below to see the event for yourself though our Paint Your Glove video!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kcThh2Um88s

As part of the CDNIS Annual Fund, the Coordinators of Local and Global Engagement offer the Service Learning Experience Subsidy to help financially support students who dedicate their time, energy, and passion to service projects (either locally or internationally). This October, two Upper School students were recipients of this subsidy to help support their participation in the CDNIS Habitat for Humanity build trip to the Philippines.

Below are their thoughts on the experience:

This September, we attended the Habitat for Humanity trip to the Philippines to build homes for a community in need. Habitat for Humanity is a non-governmental organization founded in the United States and they strive to have “A world where everyone has a decent place to live”. It advocates for affordable housing, supports sustainable development, and promotes dignity and hope for everyone. Inadequate housing is a significant global issue that needs to be addressed as it is a leading cause for poverty.

We arrived at a National Housing Project in a small village of Calauan, Los Baños, Philippines where we spent three full days building a couple of houses to improve the living conditions of the community. We built the homes for different families, hauling over 2,565 bricks and grouting over hundreds of bricks as a group. It was a fabulous experience to get to work on different building projects to help the community and also to interact with the locals and share our wonderful experience with them. We were able to provide direct support to the community as a step towards making a difference to help eradicate inadequate housing in the Philippines. Like the Habitat for Humanity CDNIS Campus Chapter Facebook Page by clicking on this link to check out more of the photos from the build trip and to stay updated with the club’s initiatives as well as upcoming fundraising events!

– By Ashley Zee (Grade 11) and Isabel Tse (Grade 12)