beijingkids is bolstering school coverage with a new student correspondent program. We are enlisting high school students from schools around Beijing to give us the student perspective on what’s happening at school and what being a student now is really like. The post below is from our first correspondent, Lauren You, a grade 10 student at Beijing World Youth Academy (BWYA). Stay tuned as we introduce more of our student correspondents!
For dozens of Roots & Shoots (R&S) students from international schools in Beijing and Tianjin, Tuesday, September 18 was a day of opportunity. Students gathered at Beijing World Youth Academy (BWYA), to meet people who all had the mutual passion of saving the world and our fellow animals – it was a very special day indeed.
R&S is an organization founded by Dr. Jane Goodall which attempts to solve issues related to our environment and animals. There are countless R&S clubs now worldwide and is becoming increasingly popular. At the annual R&S International Summit, club members from international schools in China (mainly Beijing) congregate every year to interact and share experiences with each other. This year, the summit was hosted by BWYA, where students and staff members from more than five international schools came together to share what kinds of projects they worked on previously and discuss several plausible ideas for the future. Some of the popular ideas were: to gain 1,000 pledges from people to never eat shark fins again, and even sending chain emails to help reveal the unthinkable cruelty behind every luxurious shark fin soup.
Aside from the talking, all the participants were given a sticker on the back of their t-shirts that had either an animal or a plant name, and had to guess which specific animal/plant they were by asking a yes or no question to a person next to them. Everyone enjoyed this little game and took this chance to get to know each other better. Outside the classrooms, there was food set up on tables nearby, and delighted participants hastily filled their plates with chocolate cakes, bananas, grapes, and more.
Vivian Ukaegbu, a grade 10 at BWYA, says, “To be honest, I was flabbergasted by how many schools also had Roots & Shoots clubs. And there was no age limit – some were big and some were very young, but we all blended in well. I loved the guessing game, and the food was absolutely amazing. The summit itself was awesome!”
Roots & Shoots continues to hold terrific events like this, and An Evening with Jane is just around the corner on Saturday, November 3, where students will actually get to meet Dr. Jane Goodall in person.
Photo by Lauren You
Lauren You (Jung Won) is half Korean and half Chinese, and is currently in grade 10 at Beijing World Youth Academy. Previously, she attended a Korean kindergarten, then a Chinese school in Korea, and later went abroad to Malaysia to study English at a local school and then in a British international school. Her experience of studying in diverse environments allows her to explore the horizon. Lauren enjoys reading and writing and she actively writes articles for her school’s magazine as well as for her school’s newspaper.
