YCIS Shanghai made Mother Earth the centre of attention with a month’s worth of activities starting with Earth Hour in March.

The students on Century Park Campus collected their old receipts, magazines, and waste paper for the week-long TREEcycling competition in lieu of Earth Hour, which fell on a weekend this year. Students on the Gubei Campus, meanwhile, showed up to “unplug” for Earth Hour with guitars, candles, and picnic blankets.

The Director of Yew Chung International Schools Dr. Betty Chan Po-king believes, “We are shaping the global citizens of tomorrow, who will understand that they are first citizens of the planet Earth, then citizens of their nation, and finally citizens of their local community.” The resulting green efforts at YCIS Shanghai thus also included raising awareness and changing lifestyle habits to fully immerse the campuses in a green attitude. An assembly was dedicated to watching a documentary on world-renowned primatologist, conservationist, and United Nations Messenger of Peace, Dr. Jane Goodall and her environmental education programme Roots & Shoots. Students, teachers, and staff were also encouraged to go litter-less for a week during lunch.

All activities continued through April in a lead-up to Earth Day on the 21st. Posters decorated the hallways, encouraging students to dress in green that day for RMB 25 yuan, enough to “plant one tree and provide oxygen for 18 people!” The money was collected for Roots & Shoot’s Million Tree Project, a reforestation campaign in Inner Mongolia.