Dear Village Family,
Service. Action. Beliefs spoke and lived.
Service is one of the four pillars of our school: a fulfillment of learning and love.
Service as action is foundational to the International Baccalaureate (IB) Middle Years Programme (MYP). It seeks to develop caring members of the community who act to make a positive difference to the lives of others and their environment. This action can take many forms, such as direct or indirect service, advocacy, research, and more. Our students engage in service learning opportunities each year through various grade-level and school-wide service initiatives.
From a school perspective, we seek to provide students opportunities for service in our school, local community, and throughout God’s great world. In December, we launched our partnership with Embrace of Celebration, a non-profit working to impact the families in transition in our local community of Celebration and Kissimmee.
Today, we are excited to launch a school-wide service as an action partnership with World Vision, a global Christian humanitarian organization tackling the causes of poverty and injustice. World Vision works in nearly 100 countries and partners with more than 3.5 million children, families, and communities to reach their full potential.
Our partnership provides a framework for our students to actively develop learning through the first two UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as they create relationships, dive into the daily lives of students in Kalapata, Kenya, and work together on eradicating poverty and hunger. As a school, we are committing to sponsoring one child per classroom. Each class will create a relationship with the students in Kenya through letters and videos and learn more about how we can support and work together through World Vision's Ignite curriculum. To develop our student's passion for loving God and others through relationships that inspire them to help change the world for good.
We are also asking for you to join us.
On January 22, we will launch World Vision Chosen. Chosen is a new way of connecting children with their sponsors and puts the power to choose in the child's hands, allowing them to select their sponsor from a photo. Chosen is inspired by the heart of the gospel, where God chooses us, loves us, and sees us. You will have the opportunity to stand with the school both online and at our Middle Years production of The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe on stage on January 25th and 27th as together we learn to grow in our service as action.
Over the next three weeks, we will share more about our partnership and how you can get actively involved. Meanwhile, learn more about child sponsorship and consider how, as a family, you can encounter the love of God through a relationship with a child in a different part of the world.
The great theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer put it aptly, "action springs not from thought, but from a readiness for responsibility." Service is the extension of our beliefs, the movement of our thoughts into acts outside of ourselves, the broadening of our view to God's eyes, and the shaping of our choices for love.
Now, the journey awaits, and we can't wait to take that first step together.
In His Grace,
Derek Cummings
Head of School