Students

Every year, Branksome Hall Asia Grade 9s participate in the Wind Turbine project, as part of the Jeju government’s initiative to be carbon-free by 2030. During this project, students visit Jeju's Gapado, to discuss and study the generation and use of wind energy with engineers and government officials who are conducting actual research. The field experts include policymakers, university professors, and engineers that are leading the project. Then they built wind turbines using wood, 3D cutters, and 3D printers and modified them with feedback from the Gapado engineers. Through the project, students explore the economic impact of alternative energy, while acquiring knowledge in physics, math, social studies, as well as communication skills through collaboration with other students. With the program, Branksome Hall Asia won the 2020 International School Awards in the category of 「Initiative to support students as future-thinking innovators」 by ISC Research.

To preemptively address the food scarcity issue in the future Grade 10 students at Branksome Hall Asia build Micro Green Houses to found a basis for smart farming. At the beginning of the project, the students meet with smart farmers in the local area to learn about the problems and difficulties they face and think about ways to address these issues. Through the project, students utilize their industrial design and coding skills to build a micro smart farm that engages automatic control of humidity, temperature, and other variables to create the best environment to maximize the crop. After the completion of the project, these micro smart farms are donated to local schools that are experiencing difficulties to conduct science learning, especially through the Covid-19 pandemic. 

Jeju island is a UNESCO World Heritage Site as well as a popular tourist destination. Due to the popular demand, the island suffers from environmental issues such as demolition of natural sites and trash accumulation in the sea. Every year, Grade 5 students hold the Sustainability and Technology Fair to address environmental issues in Jeju. Students identify the environmental issues and suggest ways to solve the problems such as alternative energy, reusing water resources, building robots to collect trash in the sea through coding, experiments, and demonstration.

In 2018 Branksome Hall Asia started a new school tradition that has grown from an initiative involving a small group of students. Students created Christmas Shoeboxes, which were gifted to children in an orphanage in Busan and to the Single Mom Center in Aesuhwon. In the following year, Branksome Hall Asia teamed up with the NGO Jeju Furey and every year, every student class at Branksome and many staff members create a Christmas Shoebox. The box contains a ‘wishlist’ item that the children in one of the Jeju orphanages have expressed interest in. This item is supplemented with smaller basic items such as stationary, toiletries, and snacks. In 2021, Branksome Hall Asia supported two Jeju orphanages and provided over 100 Christmas Shoeboxes.

Branksome Hall Asia students have been volunteering at Aeseowon Single Mom Center, and through restrictions of the Covid-19 pandemic, they were determined to find a way to continue helping the mothers and their babies. The students approached many organic baby food companies and eventually convinced the company Maeil Dairy to sponsor the babies at the center. With the provision of these healthy meals every week, Branksome Hall Asia students have helped to ensure that the babies have access to safe, nutritious food and will therefore not suffer from malnutrition. These are important targets within UN Global 2, which aims to eradicate hunger.

Branksome Hall Asia has been collaborating with the NGO ‘Good Neighbors’ through the annual Empty Bowls event, to address this goal with children in our local Jeju community. This initiative has been ongoing for over three years. One of the goals of the ‘Good Neighbors’ organization is to protect the food security of vulnerable members of communities through the distribution of food supply kits and micronutrient supplements. In 2019 Branksome Hall Asia raised KRW 3,184,000 through the Empty Bowls event, to support meal distribution efforts that are undertaken by Good Neighbors to help provide meals to disadvantaged children. Many children have access to full meals only at school and the current COVID-19 crisis has enhanced this problem and put many children around the world at risk for malnutrition. In 2020, the Empty Bowls event could not happen due to the pandemic, but Branksome Hall Asia remained committed to helping provide this support to our communities. Branksome Hall Asia Junior School students, staff, and parents donated food items and raised KRW 522,400 to support the children in our community.