We educate in social participation and solidarity

We are delighted to celebrate our 18th anniversary of the cooperation among Princess Margaret International School and Save the children with the project “Kilometers of solidarity”. Solidarity has always been one of the most essential values treated with our pupils. This is the reason why, once we entered the IB, the caring profile was easy to work with, as it was part of our school’s DNA.

These are the main projects of social participation with which Princess Margaret School works:

Ambassador of Save the Children. 

Princess Margaret International School has been collaborating with Save the Children for 18 years. We participate in the Kilometers of Solidarity initiative: in this project, students and teachers mobilize to run a charity race that allows us to raise awareness among children of the importance of solidarity with other disadvantaged children and youth. According to Save the Children, our collaboration with the NGO is “very important, because the work of education in values that makes Princess Margaret School with its students develops citizens aware of the importance to act to change and improve the lives of children and most vulnerable boys and girls”.

Solidarity Center with the Banco de Alimentos Foundation. 

The Banco de Alimentos Foundation works together with centers and companies to respond to hunger, by fighting against food waste. From Princess Margaret School we collaborate with the food collection campaign periodically organized by the Banco de Alimentos Foundation. To our students, the fact of collecting staple foods for families that can not afford a decent diet, helps them to create awareness of social inequalities. But also to develop the necessary empathy towards the layers of our most disadvantaged society and to value social justice to cover basic needs of people.

Collaborating center with SOS Africa 

S.O.S. Africa is an entity that works for development in the African continent. Among their actions and programs, one of the activities they perform consists of collecting used clothes and shoes. At school, we collaborate with this garment collection campaign, with the aim of instilling a sense of solidarity, sustainability and justice through recycling and the reuse of clothing, which is a serious problem, since in Spain they are thrown into year to waste 300,000 tons of used clothing.

Center committed to sustainability through Agenda 21. 

The Escuelas + Sostenibles program of the Barcelona City Council was born in 2001 with the aim of contributing to sustainability through education and the recognition of schools as agents of change in the city. Through the Agenda21 project, at Princess Margaret International School we address education for sustainability through different activities such as the creation of a vertical garden, an urban garden, the development of a waste prevention plan with the elimination of aluminum foil in the excursions of the school and, finally, with the mobile green point, which visits our Princess Margaret School once a year.

Participants in Poesía en Acción 

For eighteen years, we participated in the contest that promotes Poesia en Acció. The students write their poems and solidarity illustrations and recite their texts on the day of the solidarity marathon, every June. Our goal through this participation is to foster creativity through reflective thinking and the desire to help, through their creations, people who need it.

 
Educational center in the Som Filoscoles network 

We belong to Filoscoles, a network of schools that firmly believes that philosophy has to occupy an important space in the classrooms for early childhood and primary education. Through Filosofia 3/18 –a group of programs that apply from 3 to 18 years improves the reflective capacity of students–, we work with a multitude of values such as active listening and respect for the opinions of others, helping to build your capacity to reason, so that you are able to participate and live in a democratic world.

 
Collaborating center with Sanitas Residencial Bonaire

Nine years ago, we launched the project An intergenerational bridge with the Sanitas Residencial Bonaire nursing home in our neighborhood. Our students accompany old people who suffer from unwanted loneliness. Thus, we help our children to develop respect and sensitivity towards our elders and, also, to learn leisure values shared with them.

Sponsorship of a chimpanzee at the MONA Foundation

For some years, Princess Margaret International School actively collaborates with the MONA Foundation, an organisation that fights for the protection and welfare of the primates. MONA rescue chimpanzees and macaques that take part in circuses, television, or conditions not suitable for their safety. Our students visit the foundation every year to learn about such important values as animal welfare, nature preservation, and ethology concepts. In these visits, they comprehend that the wild species are not objects for their leisure, and they must be treated respectfully.

As you can see, at Princess Margaret School we work to comprehensively train students, motivating them and training them in respect to their own and their environment. Values define us as human beings, make us the way we are, and make us people who are thoughtful, tolerant and supportive. For the school, its social participation in these solidarity projects is a crucial way to make the students grow as future responsible and caring adults. Undoubtedly, the construction of a more just and supportive world begins in the family, and continues in school.

Enrique Camós & Gemma Lloro