CAIRO: The British International School, Cairo, committed their annual charity appeal to helping the victims of the rockslide that decimated the Duweiqa shantytown below the Moqattam Hills. The students donated a mountain of tea, powdered milk, sugar, pasta, oil, rice, dried lentils and dried fuul (beans), to help the rockslide victims. Principal of the British International School, Cairo, Mr Simon O'Grady said, "The BISC community has come together to help those in need, with practical support. We are committed to supporting those affected in all our charity work for this year. The food and clothes donated by BISC students were boxed into over 400 family sized cartons and delivered to the Red Crescent, in time for the Eid El Ftir. The British International School, Cairo, also saw the need for shelter, as well as food, with the cold weather arriving in mid-November; families in the Duweiqa district will require warm clothes and students have been busy piling their classrooms high with blankets and warm clothes that will be distributed to the hundreds of residents made homeless due to this tragedy. BISC's involvement is small in the scale of the disaster, but the students and teachers thought it appropriate to respond in a way that would provide immediate help for families and also commit the School's charity program to providing assistance over the long term. BISC students have a long history of being involved in community work, which is a requirement for BISC senior students studying for their International Baccalaureate. Last Friday, the school's Student Council raised in excess of LE 21,000, through promoting an out of uniform or mufti day. The school will be running a variety of fund raising events to assist the affected community over the year. A committee of teachers and students will organize long term project to resettle and possibly help retrain those displaced by the rockslide. "I am always impressed with the commitment and energy with which BISC students get involved in fund raising. During the 2007 and 2008 academic year, students raised large sums of money for orphanages and a children's hospital. The year before that, students and teachers helped out victims of the Dahab bombing, O'Grady said.
