At YCIS Shanghai, our mission is to raise globally competent and compassionate leaders with a servant’s heart, who aspire to and act for, a better world. These selfless values are demonstrated in the actions of the students, staff, and community. We believe that the values between our families and school community are also essential in the growth of each child. 

Over the Christmas break, YCIS Pudong Artist in Residence Ms Haruka Ostley led the Dragon of Love project at Jinqiao Being Art Museum. The art installation is part of a larger exhibition including other talented artists to raise awareness for students with special needs and showcase their talents. With the help of more than 50 children and YCIS community members of various ages and backgrounds, the Dragon of Love took the group several days to complete and is now on display until February 16th at the Being Art Museum. 

The Museum approached Ms Ostley just before the holidays and she started working on the project from Christmas Eve until Christmas Day. In the following days, she facilitated a workshop and included a group of children with special needs, supporting them to express their ideas and creativity. Ms Ostley was joined by YCIS Pudong students, parents, and staff who all helped finish the work that was done by the children at the workshop. YCIS students offered their creativity and compassion to the art piece, and also took on roles for cleaning and organising art materials. 

By opening the project up to our YCIS community, we challenged the students to think about how we could best support our peers and others in a diverse society. “Large-scale art projects always remind me that our community is here for each other and with a collective effort we can accomplish something bigger and better than what we could do individually.

— Ms Haruka Ostley, Artist in Residence,YCIS Pudong

The Dragon of Love mural

Similarly, over the holidays our YCIS Pudong community members showed off their ukelele skills to a group of students with special needs at a local school in Pudong. Founded in 2018, the UKU Angels are a group of volunteers who use the ukelele and music to bring joy to the local community. The volunteers focus on playing at elderly centres and special needs schools. More recently, they have started to teach special needs students how to play the ukelele and help to boost their self-confidence.

Our teachers and skilled parent volunteers taught the students how to play a tune on the instrument, while others sang Christmas carols together. YCIS Pudong Computer Science Teacher, Technology Integrator and Year 7 Leader Mr Vish Kapila also volunteered to dress up as Santa Claus to bring Christmas cheer to the children.

The Uku Angels and students

The robust music programme at YCIS Shanghai is designed to build a foundation of musical skills, a lifelong appreciation for music, and develop confidence and presentation skills. We hope to share this with the community around us while empowering students and leading by example.

Whether reflected in the classroom, on stage, or sports field, students at YCIS are taught the importance of charity in our Lifeskills programme. To build on basic values, we emphasise communication skills, effective problem solving and developing independence to proactively seek what is needed to support the community around them.