By Yassine El Jed, YES '13

In participation with activities held throughout the month of October for Cancer Awareness, my classmates and I decided to organize the ‘Pink Day’ event at our school. This event has been coordinated over the past two years at the British School of Doha. Participants are asked to wear all pink, and a bake sale is held to raise funds for cancer awareness. The money raised is donated to the Qatar Cancer Society, to be used for research and treatment. 

Last year, our school succeeded in raising 4,670 USD. This was quite a high target for us in 2013, especially since it was our first time organizing the event. Beating last year’s funds was our main goal, and in order to do so, we had to come up with new ideas and expand the event to more than one day.

Designing T-shirts seemed like a great start, so we came up with a design and motto “Fighting back until there is a cure.” Through donations, we were able to print the T-shirts and sell them to raise funds. This was very successful, and inspired another idea to order pens, pins and ribbons with the same Pink Day slogan printed. We offered these in return for donations. 

Another activity included an information booth that was set up at our school for parents and students; this was another great success! Finally, our last fundraiser was held on October 24, which was when we had our bake sale. After all the hard work for more than a month, we were able to raise 6,700 USD - more money than we expected! This amount set a new record, and the month long activity was covered by local media.

When I look back on this event, I realize I wouldn’t have been able to pull this off without the skills I learned during my YES exchange year. I never volunteered prior to going to the USA, and now I find my self organizing fund raisers, and setting new records for Cancer Awareness at my school! It was a succesful event in so many ways.

Photo of Yassine El Jed (right) with a fellow classmate handing the fundraiser check to a representative from the Qatar Cancer Society.