Beijing City International School (BCIS) students and families have found their own ways of dealing with the coronavirus outbreak, with many volunteering their time and resources to help those in need. When the outbreak first occurred, a group of BCIS families came together to take action together, please read their story and watch their inspiring video below.

Article written by Youran, Grade 7, and video produced by Ray and Lisa, both Grade 11, Steven Grade 5 and Youyou Grade7.

On February 10th, Wuhan Central Hospital sent out a call for donations via news media. There, over 200 doctors had already been infected whilst fighting the Covid-19 virus and were in dire need of protective equipment.

A day later, three BCIS families decided to start a fundraising project in order to help doctors in Wuhan Central Hospital, their target was to donate 2,000 protective suits. Grade 7 student Youyou's mom, Tian quickly found a source for protective suits, Grade5 Steven's mom, Shen contacted delivery companies and was able to sort out the route of the suits, whilst Grade 11 Lisa's mom, Han reached out to the hospital through her doctor friends.

But the protective suits seller only gave us three days to gather the payment. In order to encourage more people to contribute quickly, Tian decided to let children play the role as the fundraisers with 88 participants who pledged that they could raise at least 2,000 RMB. So, the task of the project was split between the students who took part.

This was challenging for the students. Grade 10 student, Wallington was one of the fundraisers, he stated that the biggest challenge he faced was to get strangers to believe him and contribute to his cause. He said that many people were skeptical at first about whether or not his cause was real because there were a lot of fake charities. But eventually, he overcame the challenge by being sincere to others. "I believe people are genuinely good, and there's always a good side" he explained.

Steven, aGrade 5 fundraiser, was the student who initiated the fundraising project and did the accounting work for the project. Steven was responsible for collecting the information from hundreds of donations, he said that he learned to always keep organized, so you would know if you missed anything or made a mistake.

On March 7th, when the last suits arrived at the hospitals, Youyou, aGrade 7 student and a fundraiser, helped make a video recounting the whole project. The project involved a total of 203 children from 5 different countries as fundraisers, raising 536,900 RMB, and purchased 4,500 protective suits in the end, all donated to seven different hospitals. And when the video was released in the project WeChat group, all children felt like they were part of history, and that the next time their country needed them, no doubt they would stand up and help.