FERGUS – After reading the novel Refugee by Alan Gratz and discussing how they could help those in need, J.D. Hogarth Public School teacher Nava Zarrabi-Yan and her Grade 7 class took it upon themselves to launch a donation drive at the school.
“After reading the novel we just had good discussions about people who are less fortunate or refugees that need to leave their country and the students said they wanted to do something helpful for the community,” Zarrabi-Yan said.
“So we started doing research of what we could do, who we could help and we talked about whether we wanted to do just clothing or clothing and something else.”
For two weeks the class collected winter clothing for the New Life Christian Reformed Church of Guelph’s Clothing Closet and kitchen items for the Furniture Bank in Toronto.
“Lots of places aren’t collecting items due to COVID so the Furniture Bank is actually currently not accepting donations but because of the initiative with the students they said they would for us,” Zarrabi-Yan explained.
“We have at least 20 full garbage bags of winter items whether it be coats or snow pants or sweaters and we have about five to eight boxes of kitchen supplies,” she added.
“We had lots of donations; it was great.”
To spread the word about the drive, Zarrabi-Yan said the students each made classroom presentations, going to different grades from class to class, about what they were doing.
A letter was also sent home to families and posted on the school’s website.
Students would then go every few days from class to class and collect the items and from there, they sorted the items by the size or age of what the item was.
“[They were] very motivated, very enthusiastic everyday, asking if they could do an announcement or if they could go and collect things from classes and already brainstorming of what we can do next,” Zarrabi-Yan said.
“Our goal is to try and get involved in the community and do some good,” she added. “That’s just a goal I had this year in my classroom.”
Zarrabi-Yan said an initiative that’s run through the board is trying to encourage teachers to look at the goals set by the United Nations for sustainability.
“So we’re going to look at different goals like poverty and social justice and then there will be a goal about the environment,” she said.
“And when we look at that goal, we’re going to try to find another activity to that we can do about the different goals as we go along in the year and then applying it into the community so [the students] can see the good that it does.”
