Book Drive for China

Over a period of a few months, I did a book drive for students in China. Since my father works in the Japanese International Co-operation Agency (JICA), I asked him to see if there were any problems that I could work on and there was a co-worker in Shandong Province in the East of China who worked as a Japanese teacher for Chinese students, who needed some easy Japanese books to read. The school name is Juang Cheng Second High School and the Japanese teacher there is Ms Michiyo Kawamura.

What I did, with four of my classmates, was collect Japanese books from different people and then do a fundraiser to raise money in order to send the books to the school. We collected picture books, magazines, comic books etc. that were easy to read. In total, we collected about 60 books.

In order to raise money, we held a movie night for the elementary school kids at my school. We booked the auditorium and showed the movie 'UP' and served biscuits and popcorn. The money we raised from the event all went to sending the books. Our goal was initially to raise Rs 10,000 but we managed to raise over Rs 20,000.

In this process, I increased awareness of my strength and areas for growth since it was my first time leading a fundraiser like this. That being said I also undertook new challenges and developed new skills by planning and initiating activities. Because we did this as a group, I managed to work collaboratively with others and show perseverance and commitment in my activity.