A Meaningful Way to End the Semester

About halfway through the first semester I talked with my 10th grade English class about the living conditions for people in Mongolia. Over 36% of the population here live below the poverty line. I suggested the idea of raising money for a charitable organization, and they were interested. I set our goal at $300 and 200 items. They brought things from home, and gave money from their wallets. We also had a very successful raffle, the first in our school, and raised a good amount of money from that. Today was the deadline, and we took a field trip to hand over the items and monetary gift.

We decided to give our gifts to the Christina Nobel's Children Foundation, as I already know the people there and could make logistics of a visit easier. Today we got to visit their main office and learn about what they do, and then took a trip to their Ger Village, to see some of the kids and see where gifts like ours are put to use.

Here are the grade 10 students in their classroom, surrounding the chart I made to keep track of our progress. On half was for money, the other side was for items. At the top it says "PARTY" as I promised them if we met the goals by the deadline, we would have a party to celebrate. We'll have a pizza party next thursday.


Here's the class president handing over our $300 to the Director of CNCF.


Here are some of the kindergarten students decorating their classroom for New Year's/Christmas. They all have sad histories. The little one in the white shirt was being forced to eat poison tablets by her mother. The grandmother brought her to CNCF.


Here is the whole class with Ozkan, their homeroom teacher, and Mr. Thornton outside the visitor's ger. Hopefully our fundraising project and our visit to the Ger Village will have an effect on some of the students and they will continue to try to help their fellow Mongolians in the future.