Working Together on Behalf of UNICEF and WWF

Giving to a charity provides many benefits to both mental and physical health. The social contact aspect of helping and working with others can have a profound effect on your overall psychological well-being. It’s for these reasons and more that giving to charity and doing community service is a big part of our school curriculum. Christin Büscherfeld, our ethic and religion teacher for our bilingual elementary students in grades 4 and 5, encouraged her students to do some research about a charity organisation that they felt strongly about. The 4th graders chose to help children on behalf of UNICEF and the 5th graders chose to help animals and the environment on behalf of WWF. 

Julia from Switzerland, one of our 5th graders, explains just what was involved in the process, “We all had different themes and groups to do presentations. We want to raise awareness about endangered animals and removing plastic from our oceans. Plants and animals are found everywhere in the world and, so we need to do our part to make sure it stays that way. I really like WWF because they do a lot to help animals and every month, I get a newsletter from them that explains how we can further help animals, especially ones close to extinction.”

Her sister Elena chimed in that, “Charity is important for kids to do so that we can learn directly about what happens in the world rather than just looking at videos and not connecting with it. We created several bake sales and asked our parents for money so that we could help WWF on their mission to get rid of plastic in the ocean and take care of our rainforest. In our bake sales, we made a total of 360.95CHF and will keep small donation boxes around the school to later send to WWF.” 

“Not only that,” added Bailey from South Africa, “but we also made our classmates pledge to raise more money. For instance, they would have to stay committed to cleaning their rooms and when they do so, we could get money for WWF that way. In the end, I learned that WWF does a lot of different types of fundraising to help animals and save them and it was great to be a part of that.”

As for UNICEF, this foundation was founded by the United Nations and it’s staff work worldwide to help poor children through initiatives such as vaccinations, access to clean water and more. As Pauline from Germany and France mentions, “If we have three events a year, we get a prize. When we do six, we get invited to the UNICEF Junior Ambassadors Ceremony. So far, we have organized three: a bake sale at the school where we made 212.45 CHF, a picture sale where we sold our own pictures taken on campus and framed it and we made 340.50 CHF. Lastly, we had a starry week where we earned 304.68 CHF by walking around various areas like our neighbourhood and the train with donation boxes. All together, we have made 857.98 CHF, our end of the school year goal is 1500. Let’s hope we make it!” 

The mastermind behind all of this is of course our bilingual elementary school teacher, Christin Buescherfeld. When asked about charity in general, she had this to say, “Our children at Institut Montana Zugerberg are really privileged. I want to make them aware that not every child or animal on earth has a safe life. I saw this when I went to Uganda to work in a school there for two months. Furthermore, the children are really motivated to work in these charity projects and by doing something connected to real life, they also practise doing presentations, budgeting, planning etc. – competencies they will need later on in their working life. 

They learned a lot, like about children in Bolivia who don’t have proper toilets and washing facilities, so they often get ill; children in Africa and Asia, that cannot go to school because they have to work in big factories; animals like tigers and snow leopards that are endangered because humans destroy their living environments or pollute the seas. They learned all of this buy doing research on their own. With this, they also learned a lot about geography, planning projects, doing presentations, convincing people to donate money, calculating money and more.  

With our fourth graders, I plan to do at least six events. The students are members of the UNICEF Kids United Club where they work as junior ambassadors for UNICEF. They received a world citizen passport, where they can collect different events. If they do at least six events at the end of the school year, they will be invented to a ceremony of UNICEF Zürich. Our goal is to take part in this and to collect at least 1,500 CHF as mentioned earlier. We have more planned events such as bake sales and a yard sale in Zug, so be sure to support us if you see us!”