A community group of projects launched by a group of overseas students has drawn public attention with its activities that gather many youths, especially high school students.

Titled “Golden Key AXON 2012,” the project held, by Vietnamese students studying at the US’s Trinity University, aims to bring service learning, a method of teaching that combines formal instruction with related service in the community, to local school curriculums as well as to encourage the youths to enter social activities.

Explaining the name, AXON 2012’s representative Ngo Thuy Anh, who has a bachelor of Psychology and Mathematics from Trinity University, said their projects are inspired by how an axon, the long thin part of a nerve cell along which signals are sent to other cells, works by connecting with the others.

Founded last November, AXON 2012, which has recently concluded, attracted the participation of many projects launched by young Vietnamese, including “BOOKAHOLIC SHARING 2012,” a community sharing book activity; “3D AXON”, which offered volunteers classes at orphanages; and “Green Ideas AXON”, which called on people to recycle waste.

One of the spotlights of AXON 2012 was “Hanh Dong Dep, Y Nghia Hay,” (Beautiful Action, Beautiful Meaning) which has been honored as the best project of the year.

Nguyen Khanh, an 11th-grade student at Dinh Thien Ly High School in District 7, and his friend spent around one month walking around the city’s parks to film the habit many locals have of throwing garbage on the street. Khanh’s videos also feature the wishes of sanitation workers who have to collect and clean up trash people throw away at public places.

Besides uploading the videos on the Internet, Khanh’s group also collected autographs of people who promised they would not throw trash in public places, and then post them on the group’s website, as a reminder for everyone of the beautiful action of discarding of trash in the right places.

After one month, Khanh had collected 130 autographs at many parks around the city.

“When people see their autographs on the website, they will remember what they promised and spread this beautiful action to people they know,” Khanh said.

According to Thuy Anh, service learning will encourage participants to get to know and learn when their actions can affect other people, as well as offer them chances to do things they never thought they could do before. Also, service learning can contribute to solving current issues in the community.

“People at all ages can join in service learning and get lessons from it,” Thuy said.