Working Together, Making a Difference

Crystal Helda and Sophia

Middle School Community Service students have been working with the basic idea that if every one works together toward a common goal, we can reach our goals more easily. With about 230 students (including teachers) in the middle school, just a little from each of us adds up to a lot! And during the week of Sept. 29 – Oct. 3 we came to prove it. This week we called “Charity Week” and each day had a theme for the donations we wished to give away. At the end of the week we delivered the donations directly to an orphanage which was greatly in need of these items. The daily themes included hygiene, clothes, school supplies, food, and money days.

Each day of “Charity Week”, middle school students could be seen bringing in something from their home to contribute to the sum of the whole. When all was said and done, we had over 900 hygiene items (including soap, toothpaste, toothbrushes); over 800 pieces of

Donations we brought

clothing; thousands of school supplies (including pens, pencils, erasers, pencil cases, and over 1,200 notebooks); several large bags of rice, lots of canned food, noodles, cooking oil, snacks and more. When money day came, we didn’t slow down at all and ended up raising over 800,000 kyat (about $640 US)!

The success of this week took us all by surprise. It was wonderful to be able to deliver most of the items listed above to Thatanar Rakhita Orphanage here in Yangon on the following Saturday, October 4th. Thatanar Rakhita Orphanage is one of our adopted orphanages which houses approximately 130 children ranging from 1 year up to 18 year olds.

English Teaching 4

Not only did we deliver these much need items, we also came prepared with several activities to do with the children. One of our goals is to leave them with more than the material items we bring by providing learning opportunities including English teaching, art projects and coloring books for the young ones, beads for necklace and bracelet making and more. We also had some happy times with the children by providing fun activities like a "Lucky Draw", playing "Snakes & Ladders" and just hanging out and talking together. This was truly an outstanding visit and proof could be seen on the smiling faces of every boy and girl who lives at the orphanage.

Together we proved that when we all work toward a common goal, we can truly make a difference!

P.S. Anyone who would like to help us out in any way, please contact:  [email protected]