Recently, I went on a trip to India with my family. Before I went on my trip, I had often heard about developing countries. I made donations to charities like Free The Children and Plan Canada, but I had never really seen with my own eyes where the money was going to. So it was really interesting for me to see what India is really like.

Visiting the school in India:

Before I went to India, I decided that I was going to take action and raise money for an underprivileged school there. My grandfather (who we went to India with) got in touch with one of his friends in India who knew of a school that we could help. I then wrote a letter to my classmates outlining what my fundraising goal was and where the money would be going to. After a couple of weeks, I had collected almost $400! While we were in Delhi, we visited the school. It was so different from my school here in Canada. For example, some of the classrooms were outside. I can only imagine what would happen if some of the classrooms in my school were outside during the the Canadian winter-we would freeze!!! Another difference is that the school was very small and it looked like it was in need of some repairs.

When we arrived, we were given a tour of the whole school.  First, we went into a grade 9 classroom where I gave a very small speech, where I said the first sentence in Hindi. Here is what I said:

“Hello, my name is Diviya. I am from Toronto, Canada and I am in grade 7. Ever since I was a little girl, I wanted to visit India because my grandma and grandpa are from here. This is my very first visit, and I am sure I will come back soon. Education is very important to me, so I was curious to visit a school in India. My friends and I decided that that we were going to give you all a little gift from Canada. I am really glad that I got this opportunity to visit your school.”

After I gave my speech, one of the students came up to the front of the class and personally thanked me for helping out his school. The students were very polite and every time we walked into a classroom they would all stand up and say “Hello Ma’am.” Also, all of the kids really took their education seriously and they worked really hard.

Before our trip, my younger cousin Preeti (who didn’t come on the trip) gave me some of her old stuffed animals to give to the little kids at the school. All of the kids loved the toys so much!

After the tour of the school, we gave the cheque to the vice principal, and she was so appreciative.

Thanks so much to everybody who donated!

Thanks for joining me on my journey to change the world!

-Diviya