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Dear GSIS Community
We hope that everyone had an enjoyable summer and is excited about the start of the new school year. The Community Committee would like to welcome everyone back to school and extend a warm welcome to all the new members of staff and students. We look forward to getting to know you and your families.
A group of volunteers for the GSIS Community, who are all very passionate about the Christmas Bazaar, have been meeting since April to discuss how we can best serve the community within the current Covid regulations.
Over the summer holidays, these volunteers started contacting vendors and arranging logistics and items from abroad as well as sorting through items in storage for the Christmas Bazaar. Last week, following the latest EDB rules for schools, we met with members of the senior management and facilities teams to discuss the next steps. However enthusiastic we all are, the latest EDB rules specifically recommend that schools should not be organising mass events and there does not appear to be any significant relaxing of these rules before the end of the year. At this time our primary focus is to keep the school open and the kids in classrooms.
With a heavy heart we, together with the Senior Management Team, have come to the decision that we will not be able to host the GSIS Christmas Bazaar in 2021 in its intended format. This is a huge disappointment to us and the team who have been working hard behind the scenes and we understand that many of you, like us, were excitedly looking forward to its revival this year.
However, whilst we are unable to host a big physical event we are looking at ways that we can still bring the Christmas spirit to GSIS and will concentrate on arranging smaller scale or online events where possible.
We are looking to offer:
- wreath decorating in smaller groups
- online ordering of Christmas goodies from Germany, Switzerland and Austria
- online Christmas carols with the choir, staff band and any enthusiastic musical group
We truly hope that the GSIS Christmas Bazaar will be back to its full glory next year and It goes without saying that if things open up, we will look at hosting smaller celebrations in person.
In the meantime, we welcome ideas from the community on anything else that you would like to see, please contact us at CommunityCommittee@gsis.edu.hk.