Last year, the first annual YIEC clothes and school supplies drive brought in a large amount of clothes, school supplies, toys, and monetary donations which were donated by many kindhearted students and parents at YIEC. This year, after looking and smelling the clothes, the Community Service Club decided to wash them before delivery to local villages and orphanages. Thus, laundry sized black plastic bags were distributed to any student, teacher,... or principal we could find who were willing to take them home and wash them. It was wonderful to see so many walking through the halls with black laundry bags willing to chip in and wash the clothes.
Once the nice clean clothes were returned, we began giving them away. Our first stop was the village next door to YIEC. Students carried the clothes over to them and were surprised at how many people showed up in hopes of receiving a clothes donation. In fact, we were basically swarmed by the people in the village. I was staying at the school and watching from a bird’s eye view. From there I could see villagers running across to get to the clothes as quickly as they could. This helped us to understand how desperate the people are for such a basic need that most of us take for granted. Fortuntately some of the trusted YIEC guards in blue came along to help us out. This was appreciated as it did get quite intense for a short while.
Afterward, the community service club gathered to talked about the experience. We all agreed that to do this kind of giving takes a lot of patience with the people who need these things. Sometimes they got pushy and grabbed which was not the behavior we would like to encourage. We were glad that we could help them with these much needed items and decided we would like to try again, but next time we plan to be more prepared by letting them know ahead of time that we are coming, and asking them to form a line so they can one-by-one receive their gift. Hopefully it’ll work better, but either way, we’re going to continue trying to improve our skills of working with our community.
We’ll keep you posted as to how it all goes.
Best wishes,
Mr. Todd
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