THS Social Impact and Sustainability Program: Successes & Celebrations

The Harbour School's Social Impact and Sustainability Program (SISP) continues Project Hope’s tradition of serving the ethnic minorities, elderlies locally and those in need overseas (covering SDG 2, 3, 4, 10 and 17) while introducing and guiding students through school-wide green movements (covering SDG 12 and 13). SISP is carefully planned and structured for its first-year launch, which could be benchmarked and referenced for other schools’ sustainability program: (a) Pre-phase including design of Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) framework to measure the young students’ learning and behavioural change, before and after their participation in SISP; Conduct training sessions for SISP staff members on SDG 4.7 (Education for Sustainable Development, Global Citizenship), (b) Expose students to SDG-related activities following with the framework: Term 1 – Awareness; Term 2 – Exposure (Reflection, Planning); and Term 3 – Take Responsibility (Initiate Project, Participation), (c) Post-phase including sustainability reporting to stakeholders. 

By assigning 2 full-time staff, it allows SISP to expand its scope beyond teaching and learning in the classroom into a multi-role interdisciplinary project, ensuring the implementation of sustainability in both curricula and school operation, while partnering with other organisations to promote sustainability to the community.

In September 2022, THS was honored to win three awards for its Social Impact and Sustainability Program (SISP) under the Project Award category in the UN SDG Achievement Awards 2022 organised by the Green Council. These include the Silver Award according to overall scoring, Best Approach Award and High Replicability Award.

THS, with its whole-school approach of establishing a formal sustainability program, hopes to inspire and empower all schools in Hong Kong to play a more active role in contributing to sustainable development, which could be the potential long-term solution for Hong Kong to achieve sustainability.