#schoolsproject

Hi everyone, this is Rushda.

This year, I’ll be on the subcommittee working with the Schools Projects – my favourite project that I was involved in last year. Going to the first ever UNICEF social was more than nerve-wracking to say the least! As a huge global organisation, I was expecting something formal with a serious exec team. Turned out, the social was nothing like that. Right from the start, everyone was lovely and I went in knowing no one and came out with not only acquaintances but friends that I would grow incredibly close to over the year.

And right from that first evening, I knew I would love the Schools Project. I started talking to Annalisa, the former Schools Project exec, and she told me all about how the project would work. I found out that we would be going in to local schools and talking to the children about what UNICEF stands for and the wonderful things it does all over the world.

When the project got started, Annalisa and everyone involved picked three themes that we would focus on: childhood rights, nutrition and education. Education was the issues that meant the most to me personally. I was born in Bangladesh where going to school, a right, was instead a privilege. I had grown up seeing children start working on the streets the same time I was headed to school but I had also grown up with Meena. Meena was a UNICEF TV show in Bangla which showed a young village girl going to school and showed why it was important for both boys and girls to go to school and learn. I had always enjoyed going to school and had learned from the show why it was important – and also learned from a young age the great work UNICEF did to promote education. So when ‘education’ showed up as a topic we could do, I jumped to be on that team.

Once we had picked a theme we wanted to cover, the three teams put together presentations about what UNICEF’s work. We chose to talk about how UNICEF helped children go to school in less developed countries and focused on a little girl from Syria, Aya, who had had to leave her education when her family fled their home. You can listen to her story here [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xpG3jLGGkvc]. We were also in charge of planning activities for the school children to do and we planned a game of Simon Says, a word search and a letter writing activity so the children could have fun and engage with what we told them as well as learn about UNICEF.

It was fun planning a good time with the children but nothing compared to actually going in to the school. Children are the focus of UNICEF and Schools Project is the only one that lets you directly engage with the people you are helping by being part of the organisation. There is always a fear that the children will get bored or not listen but every one of those doubts were gone when we saw how engaged the children were. Not only did they understand that they were lucky to be going to school, they listened to Aya’s story and got involved in the activities that made all the planning and hard work worthwhile. Seeing them having a great time was such a rewarding experience, one that I will never forget. I even got hugs and was amazed that they remembered my difficult name after it all!