Clubs
2023-2024 Clubs
- Amnesty International
- Animal Rights
- Art
- Dance
- DEAR
- DECA
- Ekispo
- Fencing
- FYI
- Girls
- GSA
- International Cooking
- Investment Alliance
- Medical Society
- Open Minds Society
- Rooftop Garden
- Silver Screen
- STAC
- Survival 101
- TASSEL
- Thespia
- Yarn
- Youth Impact
- 3Cs Jolly
Amnesty International
Amnesty International Club at ISSH is a human rights advocates group modeled on the UK organization Amnesty International. Like Amnesty International, our ISSH club writes, promotes, and publishes petitions to take action against human rights violations. Our petitions involve the entire school community. In addition to this, we work to help our student body learn about the human rights violations we petition about. For instance, last year, we hosted a quiz game event as an opportunity for students to learn about Afghanistan and its female education crisis, along with our petition. We are excited to further our study of human rights this year. We will be collecting signatures next semester, so please come and support us by signing!
Animal Rights
Animal Rights Club was founded over 10 years ago at Sacred Heart by like-minded individuals who wanted to give animals a voice. Our purpose at ARC is to recognise how we (human beings) are the cause of most, if not all animal rights issues. Instead of viewing issues with black and white lenses, we evaluate the gray areas of animal ethics; how we can be sure of what is in the best interest of a voiceless animal (eg. what if the chihuahua enjoys being dressed in frilly clothes?) to more specific and complex issues such as the dilemma of invasive predators such as cats and dogs being in islands with largely flightless native birds. Besides deep conversations, we work to raise funds for a Japanese animal adoption agency called Animal Refuge Kansai, who we have worked with at Family Festival in the past.
Art
The Art club is the oldest standing club in ISSH history, with all members holding a passion for art in diverse ways. The purpose of the art club is to bring people together through art, and create a community and relationships of all grade members. Our club’s top priorities are to create a creative, comfortable, and communicative environment. Through fun activities, we ensure the creative freedom and enjoyment of our members. We are hoping of that through art we can return back to our ISSH community and show members how fulfilling art can be and open their passion of art to new fields. Some activities we are going to do this year are sticker creating, wall painting, and free drawing.
Dance
The Dance Club is a vibrant community of people who share a passion for dance to connect with one another. Our club places a strong emphasis on fostering meaningful human connections through teamwork. We are dedicated to creating a safe and supportive environment where our members can not only grow their dance skills but also build lasting personal connections that extend beyond our club meetings. We are hoping to showcase the member’s hard work and dedication at the family festival scheduled for March 16th and also hope to participate in the KPASS event as a club, which is taking place on May 18th. To enhance personal connections, we've divided our members into two groups, allowing everyone to get to know their fellow dancers on a deeper level. We eagerly anticipate observing the growth and skill development of our club members, as well as creating bonds that naturally evolve from spending more time together.
DEAR
The DEAR Club was founded to encourage students to discover the many aspects of literary culture/genre with others, raise money for charity, provide a relaxing zone for busy high school students, and spread the love of reading within our Sacred Heart community. The club is a very low commitment and pressure-free environment for students to ensure that they have some relaxing time throughout their busy school week. Activities held within the club include independent & group reading time, book of the month activities, and planning out events to host throughout the upcoming school year. For this school year, we are planning to host a bake sale, handle a booth during Family Festival where we will be selling handmade bookmarks, reading to kindergarten/junior school students, and more!
DECA
DECA (Distributive Education Clubs of America) is a non-profit organization founded in 1946, which aims to prepare young entrepreneurs and emerging leaders in areas of marketing, finance, hospitality and business management. Essentially, DECA Club is a business club which will teach students the essentials of business and entrepreneurship they will need for their future. In the second semester, students will have the chance to compete in various competitions and events organized by the DECA organization. On top of competitions, students will also have the opportunity to organize business-related events within the school, as well as explore their interests in the field of business. This will be the second year since DECA’s founding, so we’re very excited to continue this chapter this year and hope it continues for many years. We can’t wait to see the successes of the DECA club members.
Ekispo
Ekispo club is a club that hosts sports based events every year such as students vs teachers, christmas games, and undoukai. We also participate in events outside of school like the Mikan Relay, which is a relay that is hosted at the Ajinomoto stadium for charity. This club allows the school to create a friendly environment which involves students across all grades.
Fencing
Fencing club is a newly founded club this year, founded to spread the word of fencing amongst the school. In the Fencing Club at Sacred Heart, we try to provide an alternative sport for people who are not comfortable doing intense sports offered at school. Throughout this rare sport that can be played regardless of one's physical abilities, we try to enhance the members' abilities of fast and logical thinking, focusing more on the strategies. Moreover, people who do not have the time to join the sports offered at school could also join this club, as it is bi-weekly and is during lunchtime. The fencing club is open to any people who have an interest in fencing, no experience is required. Whether it be to learn a new sport, or to build your flexibility, everyone can join. We focus on strategy as well as game experience. Members will be proficient at sparring and understand the basic rules.
FYI
FYI Club was a newly founded club created last year to publish a picture book promoting awareness of the tragedy of the Sarin Gas Attack in 1995. By creating a picture book that is easy to comprehend and understand the devastation of the attack, we strive to teach younger generations how this cult has manipulated many teenagers like us to do their bidding. To help keep the integrity of the story, we are working closely with Ms. Takahashi, who has first-hand experience investigating the Sarin Gas Attack. Our club members can also enjoy the experience of working with other students above or below their grade while moving towards the same goal. This year, we are splitting into three groups: Writing, Translators, and Drawers. From creating the plot, receiving a digitized copy, and selling the book, we are extremely excited to see how far we will go with this project.
Girls
The Girls Club at Sacred Heart strives to empower, educate, and support the concept of feminism within and outside of our school community. Through hosting fundraisers, sticker sales, and making weekly posts on our Instagram page, we hope to create an environment in which students are comfortable to discuss the topic of sexism against women, and explore solutions that can help to raise awareness for such ongoing issues. The Girls Club also works hand-in-hand with Nepal SEEDS, an organization that aims to contribute to the development of local communities in Nepal, and have provided girls in Shree Kalika High School Nepal with reusable sanitary napkins in the past. Having accomplished our long-term goal of providing them with a pad machine last year, we hope to further strengthen the connection between our club members and the students throughout this school year.
GSA
GSA (Gender and Sexuality Alliance) is a student-run organization that unite LGBTQ+ and allied youth to build community and organize around issues impacting them in their school and communities. We provide a judgment free zone where you can explore your identity and be yourself. Our club hosts events such as sticker sale to fund and help LGBTQ+ cooperation and family festival to raise awareness. Last year, we created many sticker designs and sold them to middle and high school, donating our proceeds to Pride House. For the family festival, we created brochures about influential people who are LGBTQ+, baked goods and a playlist to raise awareness around our school community. We aim to make our school community an open space for conversations about LGBTQ+ issues as well as a safe place for every LGBTQ+ and allied youth.
International Cooking
The International Cooking Club is a new club this year that's purpose is to educate students on the cuisines of the world and unite us all through our love of food. This club teaches members about countries’ cuisines around the world and promotes open mindedness and the ability to try new things that appear unfamiliar. The club also provides a service element that contributes to organizations such as World Central Kitchen that work to provide food to areas in the world that are starving or in an international conflict. In addition to thinking about the world as a whole through food, the International Cooking Club also allows members to have an interactive and hands-on experience by cooking food ourselves.Through showing a common love for food, we can demonstrate how even though the food we eat may be different, the feeling around it is universal.
Investment Alliance
The Investment Alliance is a recently established club that aims to empower women through investment education. The club teaches members all about the stock market, including how to invest in it and what to invest in, and holds discussions about what may impact the stock market. The club also hosts guest speakers with expertise in the area of personal investment. With the knowledge that members learn through the club, members of the Investment Alliance invest capital (fake money) in the real stock market. The simulation acts as a competition between students applying investment skills with the goal of profiting off the stock market. Research has proven that women feel much less confident investing their money than men, so the ultimate goal of the club is to ensure that all girls feel comfortable with investment so that they are able to build wealth in the future and become financially successful.
Medical Society
Medical Society works towards spreading awareness to our Sacred Heart community. Last year, we brought attention to cleft lip as it is not talked about enough. This year, we are planning to do another awareness project involving Nepal SEEDS for the second semester. For the majority of the year, members will conduct fun science experiments that members can enjoy and learn from. So we are the perfect club for students who have interst in science and experiments. Medical Society is a place where members can learn in a fun environment and we hope that they will acquire knowledge to help them learn more about the world we live in today.
Open Minds Society
Open Minds Society is a club dedicated to spreading awareness of mental health. Through discussing and pursuing mental health, our club strives to educate and promote mental health awareness in our school community. In previous years, we have created podcast episodes, created infographics, sold wellness stickers, organized a school-wide letter exchanging project, participated in TELL’s Step Up Challenge event to encourage conversations about mental health, and inform our community on various ways we can take care of our mental health and help others. We hope to bring a positive impact to our school as well as Tokyo by continuing to be involved with TELL Japan, an English lifeline NPO, and contributing to donations for mental health organizations with fundraisers. We also hope to introduce new ways for our club members to pursue wellness within the club and on their own.
Rooftop Garden
The Rooftop Garden Club is a club that works to create opportunities for students to interact with plants and to promote a greener campus. Our main aim this year is to have a successful harvest, focusing on growing herbs including rosemary, parsley, and coriander. Members will take part in clearing the garden, planting, and monthly watering duties. Additionally, we will work to clean up areas around the school with overgrown vines, weeds, and dead leaves, in order to create a more welcoming school environment. The club will also write plant-themed articles to publish for the school newsletters and help create fundraisers to pay for our own supplies as well as fund charities. Throughout all of this, we strive to create a fun and exciting environment within our club, playing games, doing plant-themed activities, and hanging out with other members –- whether students may have years of gardening experience, or none at all!
Silver Screen
Silver Screen is a film club which allows members to deepen their love for filmmaking but also introduce the beauty of it to those who may find this field completely new. This is our third year doing this club, and we have decided to focus our meetings on watching films, which we believe is the best way to learn the art of filmmaking. These films use techniques by famous directors and styles and take into consideration the music, color, tone, camera movement, etc. that may have a hidden meaning. We hope to learn from these films and incorporate these techniques into our own short films, which may be submitted into the Kanto Film Festival.
STAC
STAC provides a place for students to share their passion for math. The purpose of our club is to encourage and promote mathematics throughout our school. We want to help students from our school to explore different aspects of mathematics as it is such an interesting subject with a lot of things to explore. We also strive to make math fun for students at our school, instead of it only being the usual academic math that many would find tedious and/or complicated. In our club meetings, members will be able to work together to solve various complicated math problems, exploring different methods to approach and solve problems. We will also play trivia games and treasure hunts involving math. Members will also have time where they can decide to work on their own academic math, whether it be SAT practice, their school math, or any other form of math.
Survival 101
Survival 101 is a club for people learning to live in the wild and to “leave no trace”. We learn skills about learning how to make shelter with or without equipment, first aid, navigation, etc. We test these skills in real life situations by going on outdoor trips and get to use our knowledge and try them out in real life even in the snow! This club will save lives our your own and others while still maintaining to be friendly to the environment.
TASSEL
Our school’s TASSEL chapter serves as a medium for our dedicated club members to help alleviate poverty in rural Cambodia by teaching high-quality English to underprivileged children. We spent the first semester raising funds to support the TASSEL organization; this year, the villages are specifically struggling with constant flash floods, and our club is working to bring much-needed help to these villagers through fundraisers. We also continue to educate ourselves about the tragic history of Cambodia to truly understand the significance of our roles as compassionate volunteers. During semester two, our club members teach the TASSEL students English through video calls or essay corrections. Either way, our club members get to develop a close relationship with the Cambodian community to remind the villagers that love can be shared despite their struggles.
Thespia
Our club wishes to build larger community of theatre arts by being the first drama club at Sacred Heart. In this community we will learn how to use the equipment in the drama room that is used in the backstage areas, which will help us have more insight of theatre through the view of people backstage instead of performers or viewers. We will also be learning about the insides and the techniques used in theatre, and we hope that we can get more people involve with the plays and musicals our school and others host. By doing this, we hope to add onto our immense passion for theatre by learning more about it.
Yarn
The Yarn Club consists of 12 passionate members who mainly work with crochet, but some create their own projects through knitting, embroidery, finger knitting, etc. Yarn Club provides a perfect time and space to cultivate students’ inner creativity by making artworks using yarn. Every club member gets to experience the bliss of seeing a project develop and its creative and therapeutic essence. At the same time, we also contribute to the community in a meaningful way by holding fundraisers. One other exciting event that we are planning to continue this year is yarn bombing which is a type of graffiti or street art that employs colorful displays of knitted or crocheted yarn, fiber, or fabric instead of paint or chalk. We will decorate our school with yarn and create something fun, unexpected and beautiful to create warmth and comfort inside a high school environment. Whether a student is a beginner or experienced, no matter the experience level, students will learn how to express themselves through their own artwork and be able to appreciate its aesthetics.
Youth Impact
The Youth Impact Club (i) fosters a sense of social awareness and responsibility in the Sacred Heart community, further encouraging the third goal of Sacred Heart, while (ii) promoting interactions between ISSH and other international schools in the Kanto Plain. As citizens of this international community, all 22 Youth Impact members recognize the importance of individual efforts made to better our society — this is our purpose. Through working in small groups, we hope to help contribute to causes we hold dear while utilizing our skills and talents. Members are encouraged to come up with their own unique fundraising ideas for specific causes that they are interested in. We also aim to provide members with first-hand volunteer opportunities, allowing them to give back to their community directly.
3Cs Jolly
The 3C’s Jolly Club is a unique club that helps students become physically active. In doing so, they find themselves talking with new people across grades and building skills such as communication, confidence, and collaboration, which are crucial for the future. In every meeting, students will participate in distinct activities and ensure that students will build at least one of the 3C’s skills. It is a great opportunity for students, whether new or not, to express themselves and connect with students from different classes and grades throughout the school. We want to see more Sacred Heart students getting along and interacting openly without struggle.