Vietnam Australia School (VAS) is the largest bilingual international school in HCMC with a long history of 18 years, and an impressive number of achievements and scholarships won by its students in Vietnamese and international exams. VAS is also known as a school that nurtures core values for future generations.
Deeply aware of the corporate social responsibility (CSR), particularly the responsibility of an educational institution in “growing people”, VAS constantly strives to build a humane environment where students are inspired about life values, love and responsibility to the community.
Care for community
At VAS, students are equipped with not only foundational knowledge and soft skills but also love for the disadvantaged to become global citizens.
For many years, VAS has persistently organized community-oriented activities and pursued the philosophy of sustainable development. Many programs are organized by the school; however, it is the students who propose and realize ideas themselves.
Therefore, the activities help the students to put their knowledge into practice to contribute values to the community.
In the “VAS Community” program, students have to make project proposals themselves to seek funds. After six years running, the program has attracted more than 200 participating projects, with 30 projects being funded VND645 million.
In particular, the “Lighting up knowledge” project has been operating for five years. Through the project, more than 600 solar lights assembled by VAS students have been presented to children in mountainous areas.
In addition, more than 1,000 trees have been planted in many localities to green bare hills and create livelihoods for local people.
VAS also encourages the reuse of books to reduce deforestation.
The project has won many awards. In 2021, it was awarded the first prize in the “Community” category in the “Green Innovation” contest organized by the Vietnam Sustainable Energy Alliance and a certificate of merit by the Vietnam Youth Federation.
It was also certified as one of the 30 best projects nationwide in 2022 and entered the final round of the “Green Youth Labs” program funded by the International Climate Initiative and implemented by the Vietnam Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung.
Attaching importance to environmental protection
In addition to community projects, VAS carries out many environmental activities to build a “green school” and nurture “green generations” – the generations of global citizens with a green lifestyle and a sense of environmental and social responsibility.
Recently, VAS has successfully launched the “VAS Green Day Run” program for the second time to raise funds for planting trees in the Can Gio protective forest, which is known as the “green lung” of HCMC and the surrounding areas.
The program was first held in 2019 with over 3,100 trees planted in the forest. To date, the trees have grown well. “VAS Green Day Run” has donated more than 5,500 trees over two seasons.
Besides its practical meanings, the program creates a playground for VAS’s students, parents, teachers and partners, who share the care for the environment.
Caring for the environment does not mean doing great things but very small actions, according to VAS.
That is also the spirit that the school wants to convey to its students and employees through its 3Rs project.
Initiated in the 2019-2020 school year, the project has become a typical environmental activity of VAS and received the interest of students.
The project includes three phases: Reduce (less waste challenge), Recycle (recycled craft contest) and Reuse (book collecting challenge). These activities have encouraged the VAS student community to change their habits in their daily life to reduce waste, especially plastic waste, and come up with creative reuse and recycling solutions.
Participating in the project, VASers can not only improve the public awareness of the environmental protection but also contribute positive and practical values to the sustainable development.
With a creative mindset and a can-do attitude, VAS students have brought positive changes to the environment and community, supported thousands of disadvantaged people, shared and given wings to the dreams of many children across the country, which contribute to inspiring and spreading good values to the community.
