Chums Partnership

The first step towards improving education for all is to build our students' global citizenship skills. A good education needs to include opportunities to get to know children from different countries and learn more about their schools, families, communities, beliefs and values. Through these personal contacts, students not only gain knowledge about their global village, they also form relationships that make them truly care about finding solutions to global problems—such as poverty, disease and a lack of clean water—that stand in the way of education for all.

Through the Chums partnership, our students and teachers have engaged in regular, long-term communication via email, web conferencing and student/teacher visits between partner schools. Although originally designed for our First and Lower School students, the partnership has expanded to involve students throughout all divisions.

A shared commitment to environmental sustainability is one of the three core objectives of the Chums program. Students engage in environmental sustainability projects at each of the Chums schools and share their ideas and experiences with one another through the partnership.

This commitment was put into practice at a summer 2006 meeting in Malvern, England of teachers and administrators from the Chums schools, where it was agreed that the three schools would focus their sustainable practices study on water conservation issues. Curricula and projects were developed across a number of grade levels at the schools to help students learn and share information about rain water harvesting, sources of clean drinking water in their communities, and garden irrigation. Through those projects, students developed a better understanding of both the productive and nonproductive uses of water in our three different parts of the world.

As this work has progressed, our students have continued to collaborate to identify and implement possible methods to help ensure that clean water is available to all.

Throughout our continued partnership, a number of projects have been developed, designed to encourage the ideals of education for all.

Projects have included:

• Key's Middle School Social Action Club collecting gently used books to send to Chumbageni
• Creating and selling African animal note cards and calendars to raise funds to build a Kindergarten classroom at Chumbageni
• Creation of CHUMS4Watoto, a parent/teacher community group at Chumbageni and Somers Park that is delivering continued secondary education for orphaned pupils. It has charitable status in the UK, and the first 16 pupils were placed in a local High School in January 2008. It is anticipated the group will grow to more than 100 students. Pupils are orphaned through AIDS, malaria, dysentery, TB, etc. Their school fees, equipment costs, uniform, medical needs, and accommodation are all funded.
• Provision of a water retention and distribution system at Chumbageni Primary School to serve a community of 8,000. As Chumbageni's water currently has to be purchased, the savings will be used for books and other educational needs.
• The completion of a computer room at Chumbageni Primary School with broadband internet access allowing for more frequent communication between the partner schools.
• Key's third and fourth grades maintain ongoing pen pal projects with students at both Somers Park and Chumbageni, respectively.
• Every year, Kindergarten participates in a "Run for Chumbageni" project, raising funds for the purchase of new desks and additional toilets at Chumbageni.
• A drip irrigation project provides an opportunity for interested Key School sixth graders to work with Kindergarten students. Older students teach the younger ones how the Chapin Living Waters bucket drip irrigation system works and why it is so important to conserve water. The system accomplishes this by using rainwater collected in a rain barrel to water the gardens.