Mayor Andriy Sadovyi, Mayor of Lviv in Ukraine, visited Crompton House school this week, along with some other notable guests including Councillor Mohon Ali and Dave Fortier from One World Strong.
They met Sixth Form students who are taking part in a 10-week social action project with students from Lviv Linguistic Gymnasium, as part of the Unbroken Cities network.
The projects are supported by One World Strong, a charity set up in response to the Boston Marathon bombings, in which the charity’s founder was injured.
Crompton House is one of only three schools in the UK taking part in the project, which links schools together to plan and carry out projects, with the students developing leadership, teamwork and communication skills.
Following introductions with the guests and an open circle chat discussing a whole host of challenges and stories, the students and guests relocated to the conference room for an online video meeting with students based in Lviv. During the meeting, students demonstrated their development of language and explained the benefits they’ve seen as a result of the initiative. One element of the programme that was repeatedly referenced was the pen pal scheme between students where the telling of stories and creating personal connections particularly helped to develop language skills.
The local students have had three meetings with the students from Lviv so far, and the students have jointly picked two themes for their projects – one on Environment and one on Culture and Traditions.
Over the next few sessions, the students are going to jointly plan what activity they are going to carry out and how it will promote/develop their theme at the two schools.
Alan Fraser, who coordinates the Unbroken Cities project within the UK, said: “I was delighted to visit Crompton House, along with Lviv’s Mayor and Deputy Mayor and the President of One World Strong, to see how the two schools were progressing with the Unbroken Cities school initiative.
“I was amazed by the impact it had and the strong relationships between students which had clearly been built in a short period of time.
“The engagement and confidence of both groups of students was impressive.
“I would like to congratulate both sets of students and staff for making the programme so successful.
“I would also like praise both schools for their outward facing approach in providing impactful opportunities for their students.”
