In 2015, I took a group of students to the One Young World Summit in Bangkok, just down the road from our school.

The event was a chance to hear high-profile speakers, such as Sir Bob Geldof and Professor Muhammad Yunus - a Nobel prizewinning economist who initiated Grameen, the Bangladesh-based microfinance bank - evangelising about change making and positive impact.

The students were enraptured by the talks they heard and the call for long-term actions that drive real change. “Why don’t we do stuff like that at school, Sir?” asked one sixth-form student as we headed home.

It was a good question - one that hit me again later as I sat in a very uninspiring staff charity committee meeting.

I realised at that moment that our approach was wrong - not least because we still had a “charity committee” that mostly relied on personal connections with charities and had little long-term focus or strategy.

This meant students were fundraising without an understanding of the impact their activities had and did not build real connections with those they aimed to serve.

So, inspired by what we had seen at the summit, we set about changing things - including getting rid of the name “charity committee” and creating a smaller and more focused “outreach team”. Then we undertook an assessment of our relationships with charitable organisations and decided to focus on eight outreach partners with whom we could have the most impact.

Students leading school community projects

We developed dedicated community engagement teams, formed of staff and students who would “project manage” each relationship and work with the partners to ensure maximum impact from the relationship. For example, owing to our partnership with charity Action 4 Diabetes (A4D), which has a hub in the region, students attended family camps in Myanmar and Cambodia. There, they worked alongside local doctors in rural communities as part of their work to tackle the mismanagement of diabetes, which can lead to significant loss of life.

When the pandemic hit, students pivoted to help in other ways, such as using their digital skills to create a short film to raise the profile of A4D’s work and ensure donations continued.

Similar work occurred with Hub Saidek, a drop-in centre run by Childline Thailand for children who live on the streets near Hua Lamphong Station in Bangkok. Students helped create “lessons in a box” on art and English for pupils to access remotely during the pandemic, and helped them sell tote bags they had designed to raise further funds.

By developing these long-term partnerships, students have been able to see how the input has a real impact on their local community - and, in doing so, have become far more engaged in the work the school does and more willing to seek ways to drive it forward.

Many have since developed new outreach activities in areas they feel strongly about: empowering women in the community; planning and teaching science, technology, engineering and maths (Stem) lessons at local schools; distributing personal protective equipment; or supporting a local street market. And all this since we disbanded our charity committee.

Greg Threlfall is head of outreach at Shrewsbury International School. He tweets @MrT_Economics and is @OutreachSHB on Instagram

This article originally appeared in the 24 September 2021 issue under the headline “A little less conversation, a little more action, please”