JEDDAH, 7 December 2005 — Schools play a major role in fostering students to volunteer for community services. Among the schools which do so is Jeddah Private School which arranged a trip for their female students last Thursday and Friday in order to visit the Orphans of Taif Charity Society.
According to the school principal, Tania Tahlawi: “We want to encourage them to volunteer in as many community services as possible.” She said on this trip she saw that her students had immediate reactions and felt responsible for the orphans.
The students began with a visit to the nursery of the Orphans Society where they saw children unable to go to school because of a lack of transportation. Since facilities provided by the Society depend on donors and contributors, both help and facilities are inconsistent.
The Society provides the orphans with money without causing them any embarrassment. The money donated to the orphan is meant to help support the whole family. Moreover, this money is also deposited directly into the family’s bank account, thus sparing the parents the necessity of going to the Society’s headquarters to receive the money monthly.
The Society also helps mothers of the orphans to develop themselves and find jobs by offering computer courses in which other residents of Taif are also enrolled. This helps them take part in society, feel part of society and to be accepted.
Hanan Nuwaiser, the president of the Society’s branch in Jeddah, said that such trips benefit both students and orphans. “We have done the trips twice and I’m willing to do another one,” she said. The students brought gifts for the orphans and socialized with them, Nuwaiser said, and this alone brightened the orphans’ day.
The students, according to Nuwaiser, were astonished by the warm welcome they received from the orphans who seemed, contrary to expectations, very self-confident, independent, cooperative and outspoken. Later, the students visited the houses of two families where they got first hand experience of the suffering and desperation of those families. The state of the houses and their inhabitants shocked and saddened the students.
Many of the orphans did not go to school simply because they could not afford the books and papers. They were also humiliated by the fact that they had to buy discounted food at the school cafeteria. Others complained that they were unable to find jobs, or that no one would hire them. The call these orphans made was recorded and the message was documented in a short movie shot in Taif. The movie will be shown at a charitable event for the “Orphans of Taif Charity Society,” today at the Hilton Hotel. The event will include an auction supervised and sponsored by Christie’s of London, Nokia, HP and Canvas.
