Community Service – Sharing love journey

Community service is one of elective subjects for grade 11 students. Through the project that students get ideas and perform, students can form a view of gratitude and make positive changes in the world.

In this school year, Community service is an interesting subject. 

“A new school year has started, and I found myself in this subject called Community Service. Throughout my education career, I have never been in a Community Service class, so this concept was pretty alien to me. The main goal of Community Service was simple, it was to give some sort of service to the community without expecting anything in return, like collecting trash on the streets or donating food to unfortunate families. After months of planning, the class was divided into different groups, each designated a product to sell and raise money for our Community Service project.”

Tran Vo Anh Kiet – ADP 11A

After performing and ask for sponsors from PennSchool’s student, students at Grade 11 have a chance to give sponsored gifts to organizations through their project. This journey gives them the opportunity to see how this subject is meaningful. 

With ADP11A, students have planned their project by selling their hand-made products. 

“SPLENDOR is the name of our project where we will make cookies and hand sanitizer by ourselves with the observation from the teachers to sell within the school, and then all the profits will be donated to well-known Charity Organizations including Quan Com Xa Hoi Nu Cuoi and FoodBank VietNam. Our goal is to help people in need such as children, homeless people, unemploy people, etc. in order to see their happy smiles as our greatest reward. During the process, we were also having a lot of fun together! From baking the delicious cookies to busy making the fragrant hand sanitizers, we were there to support each other. We were all happy when the cookies were sold out in just a few minutes. At the end of our journey, we were able to send almost 5 million VND to the organizations!”

Tran Khanh Linh – ADP 11A

Similar to other members, Pham Nguyen Nghi Dung ADP11A has improved their skills through this experience. 

“To me, the trip was an unforgettable experience. Through the stories, we learnt about countless unfortunate lives around us. They have been suffering, especially during the pandemic, but not many people notice, or tend to overlook their needs. We also learnt how big changes can start from just a tiny, simple act of kindness. That we don’t have to be powerful or come from mighty authority to help improve the lives of others”.

Skills that students applied through this project, including making plans, finding organizations, and choosing to sell products… will be useful experiences to help for their future projects. These are also skills that Vo Anh Kiet ADP11A has had through this subject. 

“The hand sanitizer was appointed to us as our product, and we started working on it as a team of 5. We were operating like a legit business, with different departments taking care of different aspects of the products. We had roles like CEO, PR and Marketing, Product Research, Accounting, Quality Control, Sales and Production, all working together to ensure the highest quality of our output. For the packaging designs, we used Canva to sketch out the basics and kept iterating from there. As for the actual hand sanitizers, we searched up DIY recipes and bought materials like alcohol, aloe vera, made the hand sanitizers ourselves with the help of some teachers and packaged them neatly into 150ml bottles. With every department working together like gears in a clock, we eventually finished up the final products and started selling them to customers. This process gave us teenagers a taste of how adults operate in a real business with real stakes at hand. It taught us that with teamwork, you can achieve unimaginable results in a short duration of time. It also taught us the importance of having a shared goal that fuels the effort we put in the project everyday to make it work, and we indeed made it work”. 

With Hoang Anna ADP11A, the project gives more essential skills for her studying and future career. 

“Throughout the project, we were able to practice all the procedures needed for the charity, including making plans, presenting, creating posters, selling products to raise funds, and most importantly,  implementing the money raised. With that being said, we had many opportunities to develop our skills in working as a team and coordinating with each other to make a successful outcome”. 

Not only performing processes, the opportunity to visit organizations also gives them many emotions.

“The small trip to the organizations started with the Nu Cuoi community restaurant, where hundreds of people in need come for meals every day. We were welcomed by a kind-hearted woman who seemed to be older than 50 years and was the one to look after the restaurant. We were told by the woman that the reason why it cost only 2000 VND for a cup of rice was that it makes the poor people feel valued and not have the sense that they are asking for help, which is something very thoughtful of the organizers and something meaningful we could learn. 

The trip continued by going to Foodbank Vietnam, a non-profit organization that provides free food to the disadvantaged and carries out activities against food waste. Located in the northeastern part of Ho Chi Minh, in a small alley, the company was big enough for several offices, a cold storage of vegetables, and a warehouse of instant food items. It was very nice for us to have the chance to meet the managing director of the company – a very young woman with a spirit of progress and a desire to further expand the volunteer organization. We were given a lot of sweets with the message that we are highly encouraged to be the company’s partners in the future.”

Hoang Anna – ADP 11A