Service Learning

Because we are an international school committed to producing students that are well schooled in responsible citizenship, and since we want to foster in the students a spirit of community support, LICS prides herself in a very robust and well-coordinated community service programme. For more than two decades LICS students, through the Education Outreach Programme (LICS-EOP), have undertaken various projects in communities aimed at impacting on the environment and vulnerable community members. The entire LICS community including parents and teachers are able to contribute to community service through the LICS-EOP.

Student involvement in community service is premised on the pillars of Service Learning, in the context of local communities. This enables the students to:

1. Investigate (community issues through visits and research)
2. Design a Plan (through collaboration with communities) for specific intervention ; mobilise resource and skills for effective action
3. Action their plan (against a time frame and in accordance with resources mobilised)
4. Engage in regular Reflections on their plan execution by setting and acting on a set of intervention activities, monitoring of the project roll out and gauging for effectiveness of the activities
5. Audit the impact on community and their own growth and finally. Demonstrate the achievements by sharing through various school communication platforms.

Service Learning is important for the following reasons:

1. It makes learning (encountered in other subject) areas come to life and authentic
2. Student knowledge of the local and global world becomes wider, more contextual and objective
3. Student social skills of communication, understanding, empathy, compassion, respect for human dignity, love and care, responsibility and others, are entrenched
4. Students get opportunity to apply and enrich their knowledge from other academic areas and appreciate the importance and relevance of what is being taught in other subject areas
5. Critical thinking, observation and planning skills are cultivated
6. Cultural cohesion and enrichment is furthered
7. Windows for career choices are opened
8. Responsible citizenship is entrenched
9. Good will from the outside communities is enjoyed by the school
10. A foot print of support is registered amongst vulnerable communities
11. Better livelihoods are built by students in vulnerable communities

The projects undertaken are categorised as:

• School-to-School Initiatives (support to vulnerable school children and their schools)
• Environment and Community Service (support in environmental initiatives and vulnerable communities as well capacitating public / non-governmental institutions offering service to vulnerable persons
• Enrichment Programmes (Yrs 10 and 12) – intense focus on cross cutting community issues
• Global Citizenship Education

The school continues to grow partners and stakeholders and has over the years impacted on thousands of children and adults including the physically disabled, and enhanced the status in the areas of environmental conservation, literacy, learning resources, patient welfare in hospitals, infrastructure improvements in selected public schools as well as access to clean and safe drinking water. Students’ view of the world has correspondingly been changing positively.