Most conversations this week have begun with questions about the October vacation, to the delight of our students, who seem to appreciate talking about their deserved break almost as much as they enjoyed taking advantage of it. When asked what I did while classes were out, my own answer has been equally enthusiastic. No, I was not on holiday, but I did have the chance to experience something quite unforgettable. I travelled to Vietnam. “To Vietnam?” has been the query. “Why did you go there, sir?”
To make a long story short, it was my privilege to accompany one of our secondary school teachers, Marie-Odile Couture, on a mission to prepare the Vietnamese trip on which a team of tenth grade students and faculty from the Lycée Français de New York will be embarking over Thanksgiving. The trip is different than the many other trips our school organizes because its participants will be spending most of their stay volunteering in the local community, at an orphanage in the coastal city of Da Nang (see photo below).
“How interesting!” has come the response. “Yes,” I have gone on. “And just wait until our students return from the experience. We’ll be organizing a special event so that they can present what they’ve done and you’ll have a chance to learn about their extraordinary project in detail.” That said, dear readers, I cannot resist the temptation to tell you more about it in this week’s blog, starting with the purpose of the excursion which will be taking place next month.
Adding an international dimension to our service learning initiatives
As you may know, our school has been working hard in recent years to develop the concept of service learning for our students, understood as experiential, reflective education cultivated through participation in long-term, curriculum-based projects related to the field of human development. Nearly all of the service learning initiatives we have so far created are located in New York City, but we are keen to add an international dimension to this effort and have therefore been building a partnership with the Lycée Jean-Baptiste Pointe du Sable in St. Marc, Haiti. It is our belief that the nascent educational exchanges between this school and ours will provide our students with unique opportunities to enrich their lives, while making a difference in the world around them.
And it is that same conviction which has motivated us to plan a service-learning initiative in another country that is also a member of the International Organization of Francophonie, Vietnam, this time in partnership with a non-governmental organization (NGO) called “Aide Dentaire Vietnam (ADV)”. ADV focuses on bringing dental care to people who might not otherwise have access to it, but in the addition has considered its Vietnamese presence for the past two decades to be part of a broader commitment to human development.
Gah muhn!
Some families will be aware that the Seconde and CE2 classes of respectively Ms. Couture and Rolla Boulad have been supporting ADV’s work for several years already. In particular, Ms. Couture’s tenth graders and Ms. Boulad’s third graders have together raised funds to provide certain communities ADV has served with the technology they require to pump clean drinking water, as well as the bicycles and bridge their youngest members need to get to school (please see to the left a photo of a bridge in the Mekong Delta financed in this manner back in 2009). In keeping with our focus on service-learning, our aim now is to build on our relationship with this NGO by joining the latter’s annual trip to Vietnam in late November, most notably by volunteering and putting in place a sustainable human development project at an orphanage with which ADV has developed a close association.
On behalf of us all, please allow me to extend to Marie-Odile Couture our deep gratitude for launching and developing such a remarkable initiative. Sincere thanks too to Rolla Boulad for helping to lay the foundations of this project over many years and to Ms. Nathalie Roussel for participating in the trip next November. Thank you very much as well to ADV for so generously working with our school and above all to the Seconde students involved for so enthusiastically devoting their time and ingenuity to this initiative over the upcoming Thanksgiving break. “Cảm ơn, cảm ơn, cảm ơn”!*
NB. Our Cultural Center’s third and final “21st Century Citizenship Panel Discussion” of the year, scheduled to take place on the evening of Thursday, February 27, will concentrate on the topic of “Social Entrepreneurship: How to Change the World”. Please do mark that date in your calendars. Our tenth graders will be sharing their Vietnamese experience on this occasion and talking about how they envision engaging the LFNY community in this project ever more profoundly as time goes on.
*“Thank you, thank you, thank you” in Vietnamese.
About the Author :
Sean Lynch was Head of School at the Lycée Français de New York from 2011 to 2018, after having spent 15 years at another French bilingual school outside of Paris: the Lycée International de St. Germain-en-Laye. Holding both French and American nationalities, educated in France (Sciences Po Paris) and the United States (Yale), and as the proud husband of a French-American spouse and father of two French-American daughters, Sean Lynch has spent his entire professional and personal life at the junction between the languages, cultures and educational systems of France and the United States. In addition to being passionate about education, he loves everything related to the mountains, particularly the Parc National du Mercantour.