Head of Prom Committee Describing Donation to NGO Foodblessed

By: Anna Diba, Grade 12LP

As every year, the Brummana High School (BHS) Prom Committee worked really hard to raise money in order to put together a Prom at the end of the year by organising numerous events and activities like bakesales, Christmas goodie bags and Valentine’s Day roses. Teachers, students and staff all contributed in helping the Prom Committee students prepare a beautiful last gathering for BHS Seniors. By the beginning of spring, the Prom Committee had been able to raise LL 1,800,000.  

However, due to the current global Covid-19 pandemic and perhaps even more so the local economic crisis in Lebanon, we as the Prom Committee decided to donate all the money raised to an NGO called FoodBlessed. The NGO is a local hunger relief initiative which works with strategic partners, including food and non-food companies, to deliver surplus food recovered through events, such as food drives and fundraisers, to non-profit partners and families that need it. Every Saturday, the volunteers of FoodBlessed gather to pack food assistance packages containing basic food commodities to be delivered to the struggling families that need them, all thanks to the money they raise every week from individual donors.

We found that the money raised would allow 29 families to not go to bed hungry. For us, unity among the citizens of Lebanon is what will help the population survive these extremely difficult times.

The activities each Saturday therefore gave an opportunity for the BHS Prom Committee to get actively involved. As the Head of the Prom Committee, I decided to visit on Saturday, May 31^st in order to help as much as possible, accompanied by my sister, Clara, an Old Scholar, and the school’s Marketing Manager, Mr Richard Bampfylde. We ended up spending three or four hours at Foodblessed’s centre in Ras Beirut, putting together well over 150 food boxes, with 29 of those boxes, as mentioned, donated by the Prom Committee. Foodblessed achieves wonders by collecting the food products and then preparing, boxing and distributing the boxes each week. It was an amazing and unforgettable experience for the BHS team to be part of such a caring community and to invest its energy into it. The experience was remarkable right up to the very end as Foodblessed even presented me, on behalf of the Prom Committee, with a lovely cake, depicting graduation hats and notices, by way of a thank you for all our support and efforts.

With the donation as well as the action on Saturday afternoon, we hope this inspires more and more people to find the compassion within themselves to alleviate the unspoken pain that over 500 hundred thousand people are feeling right now in the country. Likewise, we sincerely hope this inspires all the other Prom Committees in Lebanese schools to donate their money to NGOs. We believe that even the smallest gesture of care can put a smile on someone’s face and relieve the stress they are going through.

We would like to thank the school’s leadership, particularly our Principal, Mr David Gray, and the Head of Secondary, Mr Chadi Nakhle. Above all, we would like to thank the Prom Committee and all those who donated throughout the year and which has allowed for this very worthwhile and meaningful action to take place.

Note: This activity was featured in The 961 and follow this link for the article – https://www.the961.com/students-donated-money-fight-hunger-lebanon/