On Friday, October 21st, two juniors, Elene Ninua and Tako Akhobadze organized a charity event at school called “Getting through the winter together.”
Elene and Tako stated that the money collected from the event would be used to help five different families. Three of these families consist of elderly people that live close to the border. None of them have any financial support. One of the other two families consists of a twenty-five year old single mother and her five children. This family struggles financially as well. The last family is a single father of six kids, who is in a similar financial situation as the others. The two juniors chose these families because the closer we get to winter, the harder it gets for these families, hence the name of the event “Getting through the winter together.”
Over email, students were encouraged to put toys, clothes, books and anything else that could help the families in a box that was placed at the school entrance. There were many other ways that students could contribute to the event, such as buying handmade jewelry, taking photos in the photobooth and donating money. The beautiful jewelry displayed in the lounge was handmade and sold by Irishka Osipova, a sophomore student, who has her own jewelry brand “Aria”. The photobooth was made by Nitsa Amilakhvari, Ninia Dzneladze and Nini Nadareishvili, sophomore students. A few other students from different grades sold books, posters, food, and stickers. The event brought the students together and gave them a positive experience while simultaneously allowing them to help out families in need.
According to the students, the overall atmosphere at the event was positive and joyful. Music was played in the hallways, people were dancing, and everyone was motivated and excited. However, the one downside was the amount of people that showed up. The organizers hoped that more people would participate in the event: “The only bad thing was that there could have been more people but overall it was great,” said one of the students that helped organize the event, “we wanted way more people to come and visit.”
When asked about the event, many students were unaware of there ever being a charity event in the first place, which was surprising as there were many emails sent to all classes, posters were hung around the school, and Elene and Tako provided constant reminders. One explanation could be that many students had skipped school on the previous days, so they had no knowledge regarding the charity. Furthermore, some students believed that the charity event consisted only of donations: “I thought it was a donation only event, if I had known that there was a physical event I would have gladly attended,” said a freshman.
Based on the above, it’s quite clear that the reason that few students came to the event was because of a misunderstanding between the students and the organizers. Nevertheless, this did not get in the way of the event resulting in great success. Elene Ninua said: “Despite the lack of students, we collected a good amount of money and people are still sending us more money to help the families out. Also, with the help of the students in the school, we collected about nine big bags of clothes and books.”
Elene, Tako and everyone else that was involved with the event, whether they sold items, bought cool accessories and posters, or donated moy, did a great job and made these families’ lives a little easier. We hope to see many more charity events in the future.
Edited by Anna-Maria Kand