Round Square International Service

Voice of Kurt Hahn

There are three ways of trying to win the young.  There is persuasion, there is compulsion, and there is attraction.  You can preach at them; that is a hook without a worm.  You can say, “You must volunteer.”  That is of the devil.  And you can tell them, “You are needed.”  That appeal hardly ever fails!

Round Square assumes that each teenager innately needs to discover and master the world beyond and within him or herself.  To this end we provide opportunities for young people to explore first hand beyond the familiar “comfort zone” and the world that they already know, to find evidence that they can indeed be valuable and effective people. It is through our international association that each school can help its students reach resources of perspective, which can only be generated by experiences that lie well beyond the school itself, and often beyond the nation in which the school is located.

Each student is treated as a human being upon whom a community, a society, and a world will depend.  The end goal is to guide our young people to see themselves as a person who is needed, and as one who can meet these needs. “You are needed” is the core message Round Square brings to youngsters

The Beginnings of Round Square remain the Ethos of Round Square

In the summer of 1954, a trio of European schools — from Germany, Britain and Greece — sent a hundred student volunteers (citizens of eight countries) to the island of Cephalonia, to rebuild a home for the elderly, which had been destroyed by an earthquake. 

A service expedition was not an extraordinary project for any one of these schools to undertake, but the collaboration would be — no single school or school culture formed the project’s expectations or its group ethos.  It was aimed at a real and vital need: if it failed, a group of elderly people would be homeless.  Unlike most service work these youngsters had previously performed, this project would take place on ground and would be shared with co-workers who would be strangers for the most part.  The social organization of the group wasn’t pre-ordained.  Rather, the norms, expectations and peer leadership of this diverse, multinational community of teenagers would have to be developed on the spot by the youngsters who were taking part… And above all, the task itself would be hard —as physically challenging, day after day, as the living conditions on this normally impoverished and now devastated Greek island would be primitive. 

Despite such formidable challenges, what transpired during the life of the project inspired adult observers.  A powerful, generous morale developed among the students, and continued to grow.  An extraordinary level of student investment in the task and a gradual empowerment of the student group in leading the whole undertaking were taking place.  And it was clear that a major learning event had occurred. 

Jocelin Winthrop Young describes in absorbing detail, the origins and growth of the organisation.

Round Square Projects

Round Square Schools do an incredible amount of work to provide Projects for their students. These are all organised and run by the schools themselves and are not planned by Round Square itself.

The only Projects that Round Square itself organises each year are the "Round Square International Service" (RSIS) Projects which bring together students from all over the world, to work as a truly international team to provide much-needed assistance to disadvantaged communities.  There are 6 or more of these Projects each year. Through our global network we identify needy causes and communities that match the Round square IDEALS. We work with locals to identify their needs and ensure that the safety and well being of the locals and volunteers is a first priority.  Whenever possible we purchase materials locally in order to support local economies and local practices and all these materials are paid for out of the Prince Alexander Project Fund. We work alongside local people allowing them to take ownership and supporting the progression towards self-sustenance which we monitor and support as we return to the site for three to five consecutive years. 

Each project team is made up of an experienced adult Leadership Team and 15-20 young people from around the world. These young workers come together with their own cultural lenses and must quickly learn to work as a team to get the task done. The service element of each trip usually lasts for 2 to 3 weeks, and the work done by these groups is humble, of real local value, and physically hard.  It provides a win-win situation whereby the locals receive much-needed assistance and the young workers learn about themselves, about others and most importantly, that they are needed.  After the service element is finished, students then go on a cultural tour to see more of the country they are in. The project the volunteers return to their school communities changed and often eager to apply what they have learned to their local community.

"I went on a service project in India, and I learned my most valuable lesson from Diskit, a 17-year-old Ladakhi resident who taught me Ladakhi singing and dancing [while I taught her the American equivalents].  By the time we were beginning the Cotton-eye Joe and the Macarena, I realized that, after two hours and despite not knowing each other’s languages and hardly being able to relate to each other’s worlds, we were nothing more than two 17-year-old girls who loved learning to dance.  What I learned from her and Ladakh was not how different, but how alike we are." American Student

Benefits to the Global Community

Young people from around the world will:

• have a life-altering experience that will positively impact themselves, their local community, their country and the global community
• experience first hand other cultures and communities both in the Project destination and also within their team 
• learn about themselves and that they have the ability to make a difference regardless of social, economic or cultural background
• will develop a greater understanding of other cultures and faiths
• will be empowered to believe that they can make a difference regardless of financial resources 
• will be inspired to give back to their local community and global community

Benefits to the Project Community

Project communities will:

• be able to experience first had how young people from all over the world live and think
• will witness first hand that their visitors from advantaged schools share so many of the same concerns, interests and beliefs as they do
• will come to realize that you do not necessarily need money to make a difference, and that just one person can begin to make a difference

Benefits to the Round Square Community

Young people from financially advantaged and disadvantaged communities will:

• learn from one another and about each others’ countries, faiths, cultures

• learn to overcome language, cultural and ethnic differences to work alongside each other to get the task done, whether it be digging a ditch or teaching a handicapped person work skills
• learn that we are all needed and that together we can make a difference

Round Square offers the following International Service Projects in 2009 (you can read about these in further detail in the following pages):

Honduras – building accommodation and facilities in an agricultural school for boys

India, Ladakh – complete building work at a village school in Thiksay

South Africa – building much needed facilities in a mixed tribal community

India  – building much needed classrooms in a poor village community

Kenya – finishing a 5-year construction project in a Masai Girls School

Northern Thailand – installation of clean drinking water supply into a remote Karen Hill tribe village