Back in January we reported news of a group of Year 12 Charity Club students, Alice, Olina, Lora and Kelly who had set up a new project entitled ‘Uniformity’ to help underprivileged school children in Sichuan. The project involved collection of second-hand uniforms from schools across Hong Kong and China, and using the materials to create new items such as pencil cases and shopping bags. The second phase of the project was to sell the new products and donate the proceeds to the students of the Daliang Mountain Primary School in Sichuan.

The students’ dedication to the project has been truly inspiring. The combined efforts of the girls and the Charity Club student recruits saw them collect more than three thousand uniforms. The Uniformity team visited the Daliang Mountain Primary School in Liangshan district, Sichuan Province in March and participated in a special donation ceremony. In total they managed to donate an amazing 600 sterilised uniforms, 560 pencil cases (all filled with new stationery sets), and 100 soccer uniforms. The students from the Daliang Mountain School were thrilled with the uniforms and wore them at the ceremony. Several top dignitaries attended the ceremony too and the Leshan newspaper covered the event; it was even broadcast on a local TV station.

The project was entered into Harvard University’s ‘China Thinks Big’ competition, a competition that attracted more than a thousand entries from across the region based on the theme of finding innovative solutions to social issues in China.

On the weekend of March 19-20, our Year 12 students went to the Harvard Center in Shanghai to present their project in front of a huge panel of judges. Out of 400 teams, 60 were selected to go through to the semi-finals on the Saturday. The Uniformity team were then chosen along with 14 other teams to go through to the finals on the following day. Not only did they make it to the final round, a huge achievement in itself, they came all the way through to win the ‘Outstanding Project Execution Award’!

We are very proud of our students. They have really pushed the envelope with this project, the execution of their ideas has been exemplary from start to finish. The Uniformity project has been a great vehicle for developing and refining their time-management, marketing and sales skills as well as their ability to problem-solve and apply critical thinking to difficult tasks. These skills will be further nurtured throughout their studies at YCIS as they continue to work towards successful graduation from our IB Diploma Programme.