A reason to smile

The faces of children at St Christopher’s School have been shining brightly as they fill a box placed in the reception area with donations of packaged toothbrushes to support Gulf Weekly’s Ramadan Smile Campaign.

We are aiming to collect 3,000 packaged toothbrushes donated by readers for families surviving in refugee camps having fled to safety from conflicts in the Middle East. Teacher Alyaa Bataineh and coordinator of the St Chris Kindness Club said: “The box has got quite a few donations in it already and we’re happy to support the initiative.”

Club members, aged between five and 11, have supported many community campaigns in the past. For example, they filled boxes full of pens, pencils, erasers, marbles, notepads and small drawing and colouring books for Syrian refugee children and enclosed handwritten notes of love and support for them to find.

The club meets every Sunday and started off with only eight children and has steadily grown in popularity. Alyaa said: “The Kindness Club is still going strong, I think I’ve got about 48 children altogether at the moment.

We’ll start up again next year, of course! “Our big focus was a silent auction we staged a few months back and we have managed to raise BD5,000 for children in Syria. “We auctioned off children’s artwork as well as ‘experiences money can’t buy’.

Teachers volunteered different experiences, like ‘a wakeboard lesson with Mr Subbiani’, ‘a bedtime story from Mrs Lonsdale’ and ‘a play date with Miss Bataineh and her dogs’. It was really great and managed to raise a good amount too!”

Now, before term ends, hearts and minds are concentrated on supporting the Ramadan Smile Campaign. Gulf Weekly has teamed up again with DHL, the world’s leading express delivery and logistics’ company with regional headquarters in Bahrain, which has promised to deliver the supplies as a gesture of goodwill.

Bahrain Rugby Football Club (BRFC) in Janabiya has offered to act as a collection point for reader donations of packaged toothbrushes and The Multinational School Bahrain, Riffa Views International School and The British School of Bahrain have also agreed to receive toothbrush donations from pupils and parents to support the appeal.

The idea behind the Ramadan Smile Campaign came from Aurora Nolasco, a mother-of-five, who lives in Amwaj Islands. As reported earlier in Gulf Weekly, Aurora, DHL Express Iraq & Afghanistan human resource manager, recently returned from a business trip to the troubled region, and took time during a rest day to visit refugee camps in a Kurdish controlled area.

She explained: “Refugee camps suffer from a lack of resources, one of which is a lack of products that provide basic hygiene. They have nothing. A simple thing like a toothbrush would make a real difference as the refugees attempt to get their lives back.”