On April 25th, it was announced on every news channel that Nepal had been hit by a 7.8 magnitude earthquake. A few days later, the prime minister of Nepal announced that they have estimated the death toll to be around 10,000 people. Upon hearing the sad news, we students at Sri Dasmesh decided to start a fund called the Nepal Earthquake Fund.
Students from Year 8 were in charge of fund raising while Year 7 students worked on writing cards and words of encouragement and hope. All of us started pitching in ideas on how we could raise funds. Ideas included selling key chains, loom bands and even cupcakes. But we did realise that the people in Nepal needed the money urgently and these sales could take time. Immediately, a group of 5 students from year 8 were identified to lead the fund raising – Shweta Harkanan, Prabhjeevan Singh, Radha Priya, Khong Jun Jie and Asvinder Kaur.
We had 2 days to work and so the 5 of us decided to spread the message of this fund by making PA announcements and also personally going from class to class telling them about the earthquake.
On the 1st day(30th April), we carried donation boxes all over the school, spoke to parents as they picked up and dropped off their children and collected nearly RM4,000. Teachers were generous too. By the 2nd day, we had officially collected a total of RM9,155. It was a good amount within a short period of time for a small school like ours.
The next step was to hand the money over to the Embassy of Nepal. On May 5th, accompanied by Ms. Baldev and Mr.Rajan we went to the embassy where we were warmly welcomed by the Ambassador of Nepal, H.E. Dr. Niranjan Man Singh Basnyat and his staff. They were very touched by our effort as were young teenagers, only 14 years old. He said thast it was rare to see 14 year olds getting involved with the real world , trying to make a difference.
We are proud to have worked hard for the project and we feel happy knowing that we have touched many lives. We have made people smile. Hopefully we can look forward to doing more of such work and continue being positive. We are thankful to our teachers who encourage us to care and share.
As the saying goes, “We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give”.
Reported by :
Shweta Harikannan Year 8
Sri Dasmesh International School
