BVIS Hanoi students with Connecting the Heart

When I heard Ms Muir talked about the “Service” section of the Duke of Edinburg International Award, I thought about the charity work that I do.

I’ve been a part of the “Connecting the Hearts” charity club for quite a while, and usually would have worked on the project on my own. But the club’s manager told me that I should ask my friends to join in too. “Because this is a very meaningful activity, you should ask your friend to come and join you, so they could help to spread the message”, said the manager. It is true. When I went on a trip to Ba Vi to help disabled children, I learned the joy, the feeling of accomplishment of helping others. So I asked my brother, Quoc Anh from 7B, and my two closest friends, John and Henry from my class to support me. We made a plan and got our stall up and running.

We did not get much attention at first. The first day we only sold 8 packets of cookies. It was quite hard. But our friends in knew about our plan, and they were interested in it, and gladly came and helped us to sell the rest of the cookies. In the next few days, business was booming! All the staff, from teachers, TAs, managers, all contributed to the charity, some even donated extra money! And many students in the school helped us. When you buy a packet of cookies, it may not be worth that much to you, but it means love, affection and care to all those people who are living in plight. We raised 4 million VND in total, three times more than originally planned. It was such a wonderful week!

All the money raised will be used to fund the charity trip to Hoa Binh and all the activities there, such as the charity show and free medical checkups. The money given for our cookies, will be used to help all those people who do not have the means to enjoy a true and warm Tet Holiday!

Again, I would like to thank all the staff and the students who contributed.

Bao Anh Year 10 student