Building a Bridge to World Understanding

What is the "Bridge to World Understanding"?  The Bridge is a project that could bridge the gap between high school students around the world, and bring them together in an opportunity to communicate openly through letters and build friendships!

(View Bridge to World Understanding Flyer)

I hope the idea will appeal to you and you will read the about the genesis of this idea -- and how you can be a part of it!

Oscar Lee (aka Oz) from Singapore Rotaract and I have been trading e-mails about some wonderful service project ideas that came together and snowballed at the club's last meeting, and afterwards. Below is our e-mail conversation aimed at seeing if his club can work with ours on some of this.

The idea is to help our local High School get hooked up with High Schools in other countries and arranging for students to exchange letters with them. It would be an international service project that would be VERY meaningful to the kids, but would entail little upkeep on our part.

We felt the first step was seeing if clubs in other countries were interested in working with us and help find high schools on their end etc. ... Do any of you know if your club, or another club in your district would be interested in working with us on this project?

We are trying to gauge the feasibility of doing this before we get too far into it, so please respond with a "sounds good" or "not likely to work here" if you could before our next meeting on Tuesday July 20. Ideally, if we do this, we would like to be able to go to the high school and say x number of clubs in x countries have offered to match our students with students in their high schools, if you think this would be meaningful for them.

Hope all is well for everyone. Please drop me a line and let me know what you think!  (Click here to see comments and Questions that have come in already.)

k

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Kathleen [mailto:rotaract@san.rr.com]
> Sent: Thursday, July 08, 1999 12:35 PM

> Okay, I'm pasting in the two ideas talked about last night from an e-mail where the treasurer and I were making sure we wrote it down right.

> Our projects center on school kids, the first one being a letter exchange program, and the second one is getting them to help us send thinking of you cards to the service men and women who are away from home. (My brother-in-law called yesterday to say his ship has been attached to the NATO forces, so he'll be getting hazardous duty pay for another few months... and isn't coming home on time. ;( )

> We were also trying to figure out a way to bring your part of the world in on this. (I know we teach German, Spanish and French in our schools... but that's about it on languages for instance.) One of the English Classes used to teach the Good Earth, which doesn't make much sense to kids who haven't even been to Mexico much less understand that life in China is vastly different than here.

> If you have ANYTHING to offer/add please do!

> We hope to get a rough idea pounded out and start e-mailing it to other countries and see what we can set up. ;)

> So, with no further ado -- I shall paste.

> k

> > Project Idea

> > Match American High School Students with Rotaract Clubs around the country and around the world.

> > Examples:

> > German students with a club in Germany
> > Spanish students with a club in Spain, Mexico or South America
> > French students with a club in France

> > American Clubs with American History Classes -- perhaps they could send the students post cards of famous places, or telling them about various parts of the country.

> > World History Students could exchange letters/postcards with Rotaractors in those parts of the world.

> > Project Idea 2 (easier/more immediate)

>Local kids make thinking of you cards for men serving in Kosovo region

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Oscar Lee
> Sent: Wednesday, July 07, 1999 10:03 PM

> Sounds like pretty good projects... a couple of suggestions:

> 1) if you could find out from the forces the names of the service personnel who have not received any home mail for say the last 3 months... they might appreciate the little notes from the children a little more.

> 2) Not sure if anybody on this side of the world would collaborate (I am copying a bunch of them on this reply) .. what might be interesting is to set up a kind of "pen-pal" agency for these children (from US and Singapore, Malaysia or even Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan, Philippines, Thailand, India, Japan - who else did you meet at RI convention?) through internet (cheapest means to do it) - perhaps via a chatroom like ecircles - that way you supervise the access also... have them exchange notes with the intention (by way of a mini local contest, local because of differing language skills) for the best written essay "How was My Day Today in ......" the last word could be any country except their own... they would have to do research including through chat-rooms with these other kids...

> quick thots...

> Oz

-----Original Message-----
From: Kathleen [mailto:rotaract@san.rr.com]
Sent: Thursday, July 08, 1999 1:03 PM

Very cool.

For us the key is going to be to find clubs interested in finding high schools that are interested, and trying to put it into the hands of the kids and teachers on each end. Trying to set it up such that at the end of each semester the Rotaract Clubs on each end are sent a letter saying "here's what we got out of the project... that's for making the ties that bind."

Most of our schools have e-mail access on campus. if the students were composing letters in French (for example) to actual kids in France it would make French class a lot more meaningful... or so we hope.

I LOVE your idea of having them talk with kids in another country as part of research on an essay about "My day" wherever!

I guess it's my turn to grab this with "my machine" (I'm on my parents right now... faster modem) and forward this to everyone in my club. ;) Well, I know our treasurers address, so I'll send this along to her as well! ;)

Thanks!

k

If you are interested in helping us build this "bridge" of understanding between high school students around the world please contact our club.

Or join the mailing list we have established to discuss this project! ;)