This month, the compassionate pupils of The Winchester School gave away a large amount of food products, clothing and toiletries to be shared among the hard-working construction workers, in a triumphant week-long charity event.
It was a geography lesson with Mrs Jennifer Schokhman that triggered a spark in me to bring about some sort of change. The lesson revolved around the tragic efforts of workers from least economically developed countries (LEDC) who migrate to more economically developed countries (MEDC) as cheap skilled labour.
Progressively, I participated in numerous meetings and hours of enquiries. All we required was a reliable link with construction workers. Eventually, we stumbled upon a non-profit organisation called Karama Kanteen.
Karama Kanteen is a wide-reaching association established by Volunteer in Dubai in October 2008. In the past six months alone, this organisation has accumulated around 45,000 meals and provided them to the underprivileged.
Without them, this outstanding charity event would not have been within the realms of possibility as they provided the ideal link between the recipients and us.
As the final dates were formulated, the Share More, Improve Lives, Enrich campaign (Smile) came into being.
I, being the president of the club, along with our vice-president and Mrs Schokhman, aspired to paint as many grins as possible on the faces of the forlorn. It is our utmost aim to share and bring about social awareness among this generation and the next.
Leading up to the week-long event, posters were pasted around the school and assemblies were held to raise awareness. The number of willing volunteers who wanted to make a difference pleased me.
Along with the original year 11 Geography class, the numbers extended all across the secondary school. However, that was nothing as compared to the amount of donations we received.
Throughout my time in this school, Winchester has hosted innumerable charity events, all of which were proven to be a success, yet none of them could compare to what I witnessed during that week.
When I first set eyes on the mountains of donations the pupils had given away, I was left agog. Words cannot describe the pile that lay before my eyes. Here were young children, just like me, who had effortlessly given away an enormous amount of their belongings just to make another individual smile. It was exceedingly heart-warming.
What amazed me even more was the way the volunteers responded to the donations. Here, before us, lay hours of packing and separating, but not a single individual groaned.
We spent almost four hours packing all the donations, yet were more thrilled than exhausted. It was a thoroughly enjoyable and life-changing experience. It warmed my heart to see so many generous, avid and tender-hearted pupils working together.
Throughout this event I witnessed every single pupil, whether donor or volunteer, along with the entire staff, work together merely to make hundreds of people smile.
I feel tremendously gratified to say that I come from a school that can show such a boundless amount of motivation, teamwork and generosity.
— The reader is a year 11 pupil at The Winchester School in Dubai
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