The Gift of Giving: Community Service Christmas Appeal

The Gift of Giving: Community Service Christmas Appeal To show our gratitude towards the thrilling experiences that KOTO provided us for the past months, we have decided to operate multiple fundraising events at British International School Hanoi to help KOTO prepare surprise Christmas presents for their trainees, according to the trainees’ wish lists.

KOTO – stands for Know One Teach One, is a non-profit organisation. They are a training center that provide hospitality vocational training for disadvantaged Vietnamese youth at the age of 16 to 22. They aim to empower the targeted youth to further equip them with necessary skills for a better future.

In the span of 1 year, we have been visiting the training center to join the KOTO trainees in doing various activities, such as gardening, playing sports, teaching the trainees English and working on art projects. This created a strong bond between KOTO and British International School Hanoi students. As the holiday season is coming, we are aware that there are many unfortunate KOTO trainees who will not be able to reunite with their family and loved ones. To show our gratitude towards the thrilling experiences that KOTO provided us for the past months, we have decided to operate multiple fundraising events at school to help KOTO prepare surprise Christmas presents for their trainees, according to the trainees’ wish lists.

We have managed to raise 2 million VND during the recent International Fair at British International School Hanoi, and in addition to that, we are also currently operating a small project called Candy Gram. It is an event where the staff and students can send little bags of sweets and holiday-themed candy to other staff/students at school, by filling in an order form. The sender may wish to remain anonymous. We will sort out the order forms and prepare the candy, then deliver them to the recipients on the 13th and 14th of December. Aside from Candy Gram, we are bringing the Christmas spirit to school by setting up a Christmas tree with the trainees’ wish lists hanging from it. We are planning to have parents participate in this fundraising event as well. Parents can support a KOTO trainee by collecting one of the tickets on the tree to purchase one of the items on the list (with a maximum budget of 200,000 VND), please bring the gift back with the ticket attached and place the gift underneath the Christmas tree, as always a big thank you to everyone for your support.

Kevin Halpin, Community Service Manager