One snowy Tuesday in December of 2021, we received 10 boxes of housewares, among other great and sturdy furniture from our wonderful donors.
These 10 boxes of pots and pans, utensils and silverware were collected by students from Mme. Zarrabi Yan’s Grade 7 class at JD Hogarth Public School. Together with their teacher, Mrs. Nava Zarrabi-Yan, they have been studying, discussing, and acting on the United Nations 17 Goals for Sustainable Development (SDG). Their first activity as a class was reading the Novel Refugee by Alan Gatz. While reading, they had many discussions about refugees around the world, past and present. The class spoke with a volunteer from the Matthew House in Toronto and learned about the process and struggles with obtaining refugee status.
This sparked an idea. Kids wanted to help Refugees in Canada and to do that, they decided to run a donation drive for clothing items to donate to the Clothing Closet in Guelph and kitchen items for Furniture Bank in Toronto. The class prepared school presentations, announcements and wrote letters home to families to involve the entire school community.
“[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.”
They collected over 20 garbage bags full of winter clothing and 10 boxes of kitchen supplies.
Students are looking forward to the next activity to have a positive impact on their community.
