Role
Co-Leader — one of two student organisers
Scale
Entire Year 7 cohort — c. 90 students
Run in partnership with Research Schools International and Dr Christina Hinton, under Harvard’s Human Flourishing Program. The programme studies flourishing as a state in which every aspect of a person’s life is good, and the conditions that help communities reach it.
I co-led a partnership between the whole Year 7 cohort and Rockdale care home. We recorded interviews with residents about how they find fulfilment, and the Year 7s designed art tiles representing their own visions of flourishing — now on permanent display at Rockdale. The project closed with visits where students and residents talked and performed together, leaving both groups with a wider sense of what a good life looks like.
Read the school’s articleOngoing work in care homes and community settings in the UK and Hong Kong.
I volunteer at a monthly drop-in clinic, working one-to-one with the elderly on whatever digital problem has got in their way — from phones and video calls to online forms.
Playing violin for residents — a small piece of joy in an ordinary afternoon, and the most direct way I have of bringing music to people who rarely get to hear it live.
Recording extended, podcast-style interviews with residents about their lives, then sharing them with younger students so that experience separated by seventy years still gets passed on.
Weekly one-to-one sessions teaching young children to read — reading alongside them, building confidence, and adapting to each child’s pace.
Together with my mentoring and Science Club work, it has meant teaching people of very different ages and backgrounds, and learning to rebuild an explanation from scratch each time for whoever is in front of me.
View the postOngoing volunteering with my local church, across its summer programme and its services.
Helping run the children’s summer programme — setting up the crafts and games, and keeping sessions moving once they were under way.
Sessions ran in Cantonese, so I translated into English and Mandarin to help children who could not follow along understand what was happening and take part.
Playing violin alongside the church choir at services on several occasions.
A service group at Sevenoaks that I am a member of, focused on wellbeing in education.
Weekly sessions at a local primary school preparing pupils for the move up to secondary. I ran one of the workshops myself and helped facilitate the others.
Writing for school magazines — book recommendations, and Oaks of Wisdom, explaining brain states and the science behind them.
Contributed to improving the school’s wellbeing room, drawing on the evidence-based musical interventions from my independent research.
See the project