Work Text:
Title: Making a little Difference
Written By: Hafsa Binte Haroon
A hint of a smile came across my face as I watched Sarah take a deep breath and clench her fists. Her reactions to these lectures had almost become predictable and any second now, she was going to voice her opinion.
We were studying Global Warming in Geography and then discussing floods as an effect of it. Aside from a few students, none of them were really paying attention as our teacher droned on about the casualties of the 2010 Pakistan flood, “Students, that flood is recorded as one of the biggest tragedies of the world. There were around one thousand, seven hundred and eighty one deaths as a result, along with almost three thousand people injured. Unfortunately, that was not all, more than 1.89 million houses were destroyed.” Those paying attention quickly noted down the numbers, while the rest doodled and passed notes.
“And the rate this is moving, it is possible that a crisis as drastic as that might occur again, and we have no way of stopping it,” the teacher continued and then took & slight pause. Not wasting the opportunity, Sarah raised her hand quicker than lightning. The teacher gestured for her to start, and she asked, “We cannot stop it, but we can try to lessen the damage, right? We know about all these problems, why are we not solving them?” “Dear, you need to understand that to take preventive measures; we need money, lots of it. And unless that can be arranged or global warming suddenly stops, I am afraid there is not much we can do on that big a scale.” Sara’s mouth opened again but she was cut off by the bell.
She glared at the words written in her book. She, along with most of our class, was one of those who did not listen to her lectures of this subject, but when topics like these came up, she was the only one that participated. The said topic was all but forgotten when our math teacher came in with a massive pile of notebooks and a scowl on her face. My best guess was, she had marked our tests.
The next morning, I saw Sarah and our Geography teacher involved in a discussion a few feet from the classroom. I observed as Sarah pointed to the contents of the book in her hands and the educator asked her a question. Sarah nodded her head enthusiastically and both of them smiled as our teacher steered them towards the staff room. I wondered what was going on since none of us had witnessed that teacher smile before this.
Throughout the day, Sarah kept her composure and gave nothing away. Geography was the last class of the day, and most of our class groaned at the thought of another monotonous lecture. As soon as the teacher came in, she handed Sarah a pen and paper clipped to a clipboard and said, “You get me at least seventy five out of two hundred signatures, and we are going to do this.” Nodding, Sarah quickly rushed out the door, but halted when the teacher said, “Take someone with you, Sarah.” The student in question looked around until her gaze landed on me and she motioned for me to get up. Despite being one of the top students, I jumped at the prospect of missing this one class.
We entered the class right next to us and Sarah greeted the teacher, asking for permission to make an announcement. “We are looking for students who would agree to help us educate others about global warming; further details will be given later. Are any of you interested?” For at least twenty seconds, there was pin- drop silence, and then a tall boy at the back of the class raised his hand. Grinning, Sarah went and gave him the piece of paper to sign on. “Hey Sarah, Nathasha, can teachers sign as well?,” the aged educator of the same class asked us. After a moment of consideration, Sarah replied, “Absolutely,” and walked to him with the sheet.
On our way to the next room, Sarah started explaining the plan to me. I admit I was impressed. “I know that it probably won’t make a significant difference in the world, but I want to try. At least I will be able to say that we made an effort,” she concluded. I put a hand on her shoulder and we stopped speed walking, “Hey, I think this could work so many people are struggling, and it’s amazing that we are taking this opportunity to provide the little help that we can.” She passed me a grateful smile and we continued. Sarah made the announcement and I got the signatures and I am proud to say that we got a hundred and twenty three signatures with ten of them being those of the teachers.
We reached our classroom just as the last bell rang. Sarah was positively beaming as she presented the paper to our Geography teacher, Mrs. Hadley. She took it and assured us that she would talk to the principal and see what she thought. I had always been one of those students who went home late. As I waited for my father to pick me up, I thought about what we had started. Our schools ran all these greenery and cleanliness programs and it would be nice if this became a part of them too. It couldn’t hurt to try, right?
From what I was told, convincing the principal was not an easy task; firstly, we could not get a hold of her because she was busy. Secondly, we could not just throw out the idea; we needed data to back it up. Unsurprisingly, most of our class volunteered to put in the extra work and made sure that all the data about what was happening and what we could do would be gathered. Finally, we were allowed to test out the program, but not before promising to not compromise our studies.
After getting through that obstacle, the real work started; after school, we would get permission to stay another hour or two to start the program. Most of those who signed showed up, but some did chicken out after hearing that it would take time and energy to do this.
Our class aa whole was tech nuts and some were social media influencers, so we thought of that as the best platform to start. Sarah asked two of our classmates to go through every Facebook and Instagram account with over two hundred followers in the room. She then handed out papers with surveys for the owners of those accounts to run. Those surveys included questions about tree plantation, pollution, water conservation and education. Lucky for us, we started getting rapid responses from all areas.
A few students among us had experience in writing and suggested writing awareness articles. Sarah jumped at the idea and they also got to work. The rest of our team started small projects like recycling and tree plantation. I was impressed at how well Sarah handled everything; listening to everyone, shooting down ideas in a positive way, passing out orders, going through everything that was going on, she was a natural leader. While she seemed perfectly confident and in control, she frequently asked out loud, “Can we do this? Are you willing to do this, can we pull it off?” And each time, the rest replied exuberantly in the affirmative.
In a few weeks time, all projects were almost complete. The question was, what are we supposed to do with them? Sarah had a few ideas, but they all needed more thought. “We can publish the articles in the local newspaper,” came a voice from the back of the room. Sarah nodded in relief and I wrote the idea down. “We can take these projects to other schools”, said another. “We can spread the word and encourage others to do what they can at their level”, and the ideas kept coming. None of them were yet fully thought through, but they could work. I put our tech guys to work by asking them to hunt for magazines and newspapers that were accepting articles. I also started talking to others to see what we can do to inspire others.
Sarah and the guy who suggested that we go to other schools took the idea to our Geography teacher. This was the biggest ‘what if’ amongst all ideas we had. It would involve the school and if it went south, it would be really, really bad. I was almost sure that this would not get permission.
I was right, we did not get permission. The rest worked and we put all plans into action. Though Sarah was disappointed and somewhat frustrated that an idea that big got shot down, she did not make a fuss in front of anyone. Through the course of another few weeks, everything was going well. We certainly had some problems; one of the magazines insisted on heavy editing for all of our articles and we decided that we did not want to publish there. A few students got exasperated with the slow pace we were moving at and we lost two more students because of the same thing. This disheartened Sarah and that took some time to recover.
One Friday, all of us were gathered in the computer lab, working on the program, when the principal dropped by. That caused some questions to arise, but I was immediately filled with dread and by the looks of it, so was Sarah. Turns out, it was not a bad thing at all; our work online had become so big that other schools wanted us to extend the program there. There weren’t a lot of them, just two or three for now, but it was a start.
Our hard work and time prayed off and everything was going smoothly. The work lessened a lot when we passed the initial stage, so it was pretty relaxed and did not take much of our time, allowing us to maintain our grades as well. As Sarah said, it might not make a huge difference, but we tried. And had fun along the way.