A ripple effect — The crazy adventures of The Oes

In February, I went to Cambodia for three days with my family and friends. On the last day when we were about to leave, I asked my parents if I could go visit a local school with our friends. They said I could go but they were going to stay in the room packing and resting. So, then I woke up early, ate breakfast, then got on the car with our friends to go visit the school.

Someone that worked at our hotel named Rady used to be a teacher at the school we were going to visit, so it made it easier for him to take us to go visit a school. We were driving in one of the poorest parts in that area, the roads were very rugged, all the houses were teeny-tiny and they were on big fields with no electricity wires connected, but almost everyone smiled and waved to us. When we got to the school, several kids helped us push the gate open, all the kids were so excited and curious about the car, the way we looked, and the language we spoke. Their classrooms were made out of straw and bamboo, the floors were red dirt, there was no electricity or running water, most kids were barefoot, but every single kid still seemed very happy and enjoyable. We played some games and took some pictures with them, showed them how to take a selfie, then got back on the car.

Playing a hand game together, with my friend Charlotte.

On the way back, Rady explained how in that village there aren’t that many children that get an education because they have to work in the fields. They have never seen anything like a phone or a car, they have never had any foreigners visit. They don’t have any organizations supporting them either, but Rady goes back and teaches every once in a while and donates some books. Then I thought about how they are very short on supplies but I could tell that they were very happy and grateful that they have the opportunity to get an education. Unlike at our school, we have so many resources but not many people realize it, some people even dislike going to school. If the kids in Cambodia really want to learn, I think that is a great thing. How can I help them improve their environment so that they can get an even better education?

If I help these kids get a better education, it could totally change their future, they would get a better job, know more about the world and they could help their whole community get wealthier. When I got back to Taiwan I had the idea to do a school supplies donation drive, then donate the supplies to the school. I planned for this activity to go on for two weeks, but then it went on for four months! This project totally did not go out how I thought it would…

First of all, nobody in my school has a clue what a donation drive is. All the kids know how to do is Study, Homework, Tests. I found two of my friends and explained to them about the school in Cambodia and what a donation drive is. After they got the idea, we went to the principal’s office to ask her if we could do the drive. No one in my school has ever gone to the principal’s office themselves to have a meeting, so my friends were so nervous, afraid she wouldn’t be nice to us. At first the principal was very surprised, then she became confused but curious and excited because nobody has ever done something like a drive or a bake sale at our school. Finally she said yes, and she wanted us to do a presentation in front of the whole school! I was excited and so glad we were actually going to do this, but the other girls were super nervous because they haven’t done many public speaking projects. By the way, they didn’t talk the whole time we were in the principal’s office!

When we came out they kept on accusing me by saying stuff like, “How come you didn’t ask her if we could do the drive by the gate?” “How come you didn’t ask her when we were going to do the presentation?” Then I said, “How come you didn’t ask?” They said it was because when they saw the principal they got super nervous and became speechless. That’s another reason why no one has ever done a project like this at our school in Taiwan, kids don’t really know how to discuss about things, especially with teachers. There is a very big bubble between teachers and students. Nobody really asks the teacher questions, if they really need to they will go in groups because it’s less “scary”. Nobody dares to negotiate with teachers either, so whenever I wanted to ask for my teachers' opinions about the donation drive and ask them why they think that way, some of the teachers and my friends thought it a bit odd how forward I was.

After I got the teachers' approval to do the donation drive, we did our presentation at morning assembly in front of the whole school, and we put posters and boxes around the school. Sometimes I would get frustrated with my friends because they were so clueless, I had to start from the very beginning with everything. They would ask me “Why do we have to put posters up?” Then I would say, “To get people’s attention.” “Why do we have to get people’s attention?” “So then people will want to donate stuff.” The question they would keep asking me over and over again was, “Are you sure this is going to work?”

Within a week, the boxes were full of school supplies! Everyone at school thought the donation drive was so cool because no one has ever done anything like this. At first it was just me and two of my friends doing it, then it became my whole class doing it together, my teacher used this opportunity to teach us life skills. Like how to persuade people to participate, how to work in groups efficiently to finish something, he helped us improve our public speaking skills by arranging times to meet with classrooms all over the school to tell everyone more details about our drive. He even taught some of my classmates how to make a documentary for this activity. We named this project, “Sending love to Cambodia”. Pretty soon we had about eight boxes of school supplies, one box was around sixteen pounds, which was about one-hundred and thirty pounds of supplies.

This class was very supportive, their teacher told everyone at least to donate one thing, and then gave us a whole box of supplies.

Before I started doing this project I didn’t think a lot about what we were going to do after collecting the supplies. Collecting all the supplies wasn’t hard and it went by fast, the hard part was everything after that. Organizing everything was such a pain! We had to sort every different type of supply, we had to put all the pencils in a pile, all the notebooks, pens, sharpeners…etc. After we sorted everything we had to count how many of that type of supply we had, so we know which ones had too little, which ones had too many. For example, we had one-thousand something pencils, and twenty-five sharpeners! What happens if their pencils get dull? After we knew all the numbers, we started encouraging everyone to donate pencil sharpeners and no more pencils.

There are at least eight hundred pencils in this box.

It was frustrating when we were so clear that this was a school supplies drive, not a junk drive, so please don’t donate anything else except for school supplies. When we were sorting through everything we had to throw away a lot of pencils that were too short, pens that had no ink, correction tape that had nothing in it, and stuff like that. There was another pile of stuff that were things that were in good shape but were not school supplies. For example, utensils, a CD bag, a plug-in lamp and a mouse pad. (As I mentioned before they don’t have electricity, or personal electronics.)

Our whole class sorting all the supplies and packaging them into boxes.

It was very satisfying looking at all the school supplies sorted in the boxes after all our hard work, but we couldn’t send them out yet because we didn’t have enough money. My classmate’s mom works at a shipping business, so it made it easier for us to communicate and we got a discount. Even though we got a discount, the cost was still around four-hundred US dollars. It would be much easier to raise the money in America because we could just do a bake sale and be over with it. But of course, it would be even harder to get an approval for a bake sale than doing a donation drive, they would think it’s weird that I’m trying to get money at school, and the recesses are only ten minutes.

My sister and I went to go sell cookies on the streets a few times, but it was hard because some locals had doubt about what us kids were doing trying to get money on the streets, even though we already explained that we were fundraising for a good cause. Foreign tourists understood more about fundraising though, so they were very supportive. We still had quite a lot of money to fill in so we decided raise the money at our once-a-year school carnival.

Selling cookies with Phoebe and my friend.

Every year we have a carnival at school, it is a very cultural thing to do in Taiwan. It is so exciting when all the parents and relatives come to watch amazing performances, eat and drink from the delicious food stands, and play fun games. School plays a very important role in Taiwan society, it’s a place where kids are safe, so that’s why it happens at school. Every class has to pick an entertainment stand, and every grade has to pick an educational stand where people can come tour the stand to learn something new. This year’s topic for the educational stand was countries from around the world, all the teachers from the sixth grade got together to discuss and decided on Cambodia. Not only can we teach everyone about Cambodia and their lifestyle, we can also teach everyone about their education environment, and we can raise some money for our shipping cost at the same time! Now it wasn’t just my class doing “Sending love to Cambodia”, it was the whole grade!

Every class did a poster board about Cambodia’s history, culture, tourism, location, and ours was about sending love to Cambodia. Our main goal was to let other people to feel something for these kids in Cambodia, to let them understand more about the world. We can’t just keep on telling them to give us money, we had to let them have some feelings, and perhaps they will give us some money. Even though we didn’t raise that much money in the end, I was still glad we did this to introduce something different to everyone, I hope they remembered what we told them and can use this knowledge usefully.

After the carnival was over, every class had raised lots of money and was discussing what do with it, most classes donate some and keep some. We went to a lot of classes to tell everyone if they are trying to find an organization they can consider donating money to us for our shipping cost. Many classes thought it was more meaningful to support people they knew, and it was easier. Because there were five classes that chipped in a little, we had enough money to ship the remaining supplies!

A few weeks later, Rady sent us pictures of the kids with the school supplies. I felt a wave of love and warmth as I spotted a picture of a little girl smiling as if she got a million dollars with three pencils in her hands. It wasn’t until then it hit me. Was I really the one who started all this? I couldn’t believe that the person that made her this happy was actually me. The reason why they are holding pencils right now is because of me. It’s mind blowing.

"Hurry Hurry! Don't be the last one in line!

The whole school with the supplies, ready to hand out!

Soon things were seriously going insane. I went from “the American-kid-that-nobody-knows” to “the kid that did that did something nice for kids in Cambodia.” Almost everyone in the school knew me or at least recognized me. Once we went to a department store on one of the weekends, and someone from my school that I never talked to knew my name and said, “Hi Chloe!”. I was surprised but then thought about why and said hi back.

Then I got picked as “the role model student” representing Xinyi elementary school, usually it’s someone with good grades or is smart, but this time it was much different. I went to get my award from the mayor and got reported to be on the news and newspaper. One day at school my friend was reading the newspaper that got delivered that morning, and all of a sudden, she said, “Chloe, it’s you!!!”. Everyone rushed over to see, and it really was an article about the school supplies drive with a picture of me and the Cambodia kids. After that our documentary that my classmates were working on for a long time was finally ready, and our principal loved it so much that she put it on the TV in front of our school playing twenty-four-seven!

Here's a link to the video with me on the news:

https://youtu.be/eDalk2cbn8A

Here's a link to our documentary:

https://youtu.be/WUrszaa1c5g

The newspaper for kids that gets delivered to our school every morning.

I never intended for all of these crazy things to happen, it is cool that they happened but the thing that makes me happiest is seeing that the kids in Cambodia were happy and hearing people say that they learned or got something from this project. I opened another window for my classmates in Taiwan showing them that the world is a big place, everyone has different lives, we are small compared to the world, but we can still make a difference. On my yearbook, a lot of my classmates said stuff like, “Thank you so much for hosting this special sending love to Cambodia activity. This was the first meaningful and nice thing that I did in the past twelve years, thank you for giving me the opportunity. I learned so many things that I would have never learned before if you didn’t do this, you have such a great heart.” These words are one-hundred times better than being on the news or getting any award.

At the end of the day my goal was to give the kids in Cambodia better learning resources and I hope they will get a better education and have a better future. This has been such an amazing and special experience, I would never have been able to achieve this goal without my classmates, my teachers, my family, the Palmers (the friends that took me to the Cambodia school) and the people in Cambodia that helped give the school supplies to all the students. Thank you all so much for supporting my ideas and helping me through hardships, you don’t know how appreciative I am. I am like the pebble that dropped into the water, and there are more ripples every time we change something together, every time more people come in. I hope through this “sending love to Cambodia” activity, more and more people will want to make the world a better place, there could be lots of pebbles and ripples in the water, and we could all put more and more love into every corner of this world together.