As part of the Corporate Social Responsibility plan at BROWNS, we encourage and facilitate our students to be involved in the local community and various charities. For Christmas 2015, we wanted to encourage our students to have outreach to members of the society who don’t experience Christmas as we typically do. Therefore, BROWNS partnered with the Salvation Army in Brisbane CBD to contribute a Christmas Hamper which will be distributed to those families in need over the Christmas period.
To facilitate this, we worked with our Under 18 students (English for Academic Purposes – High school preparation, Level 1) and created lessons centred around this project. Here’s what the U18 EAP Level 1 class did:
On Friday, 18th of December, students from Under 18 EAP 1 were involved in a social responsibility activity where they had to prepare hampers for the Salvation Army. Initially, students were given a worksheet to complete for prior learning in preparation for the activity. The content included information about ‘what a charity is’ and other functional vocabulary related to ”giving assistance’’ to others. Students also watched some authentic material which gave information about what the Salvation Army does and how they help in different ways. Students were also involved in an activity which required them to cut out suitable shopping items (to purchase for people who live on the street) from a catalogue and calculate the cost of items up to a specified value per group. (This was a practical way to facilitate the learning of budgeting and mathematics within the classroom as well).
In the afternoon, students set off happily to buy their shopping items. They worked co-operatively within their groups discussing suitable items for the hamper. They all assisted with carrying bags of items. After shopping, they came back to school and the students collaboratively put the items into 3 storage boxes. They decorated the hampers with colourful ribbons and clear plastic. The class then brought the items to the Salvation Army Temple on Ann Street, Brisbane.
They were greeted by Pamela, an attendant at the church. She brought the students and teacher into the church and gave a short speech on the history of Salvation Army and how they assist people less well off than ourselves in the community. The students also received a booklet about their organisation.
The students were impressed with the visit and happy to have the opportunity to be involved in a social responsibility task. For homework the students wrote a reflective journal about their visit. The comments in their journal included things like, ” I really enjoyed shopping to help poor people in our community”.
It is great to encourage students at BROWNS to be a part of giving within the community. Thanks go to the U18 EAP 1 teacher, Kira Kim, for her help in organising this event.
