EXTREME MAKEOVER
SCHOOL EDITION
King’s Academy took community engagement to the next level this year, giving two local schools a major uplift by renovating spaces and shifting mindsets. BY MUNA AL-ALUL
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new service activity initiated by the junior class at King’s Academy has given a local school for underprivileged children a major facelift. In a true act of community engagement, the entire King’s Academy community worked together to raise money and renovate the Erenbeh Elementary School in Al Jiza. In addition to the 11th grade class, led by Class Dean Maram Haddad, dozens of faculty and staff volunteered their time and skills, from members of the finance department to grounds staff and bus drivers.
The juniors started by holding a fundraising event at the Student Union that raised 498 JOD through direct donations and the sale of junior classthemed t-shirts. They also worked together on creating a large painting to gift to Erenbeh School. After visiting the public school to assess its needs, King’s discovered that major renovations including plumbing, electricity, painting and carpentry — at a cost of 2,500 JOD — were needed to fix-up a rundown auxiliary building used by 150 students in grades one to three who had been moved out of the main school building due to
overcrowding. King’s Office of Student Life donated 1,000 JOD and hired an external contractor to begin the overhaul of the building’s electrics and plumbing, joined by volunteers from King’s maintenance team. After spending a couple of days laying the groundwork for the renovations, scores of 11th graders, faculty and staff spent an additional day completing internal and external renovations including sanding and painting desks and walls in seven classrooms, among many other tasks. King’s also donated used furniture such as desks, cupboards, fans and art supplies. SPRING 2020
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“I truly enjoyed helping out,” says Omar Alsulaiman ’21. “I’ve donated to important causes, but when you actually go to a place and help, it is a totally different experience that I will never forget.” “It is really important to support the education of youth in areas like Al Jiza,” adds Alsulaiman, who believes that renovating schools in need should become an annual activity at King’s. Fanar Al Derzi ’21 and Ahmad Younis ’21 then took the initiative of organizing a charity festival, King’s Fest, to raise the remaining funds needed for the school's renovation. Hundreds of people, including orphaned children invited through Al Aqsa Association, King’s students, faculty, their families and friends enjoyed games, sports, art activities, musical performances, a bazaar and other activities at the fun community event on October 19. King’s Fest succeeded in raising over 1,500 JOD to cover the remaining costs of the Erenbeh School renovations. “King’s Fest was the biggest studentled fundraising event ever held on campus,” says Al Derzi. “The greatest gift to our community is when we contribute to making lives better: when we touch lives by the dint of donations, spreading light to the most needy and enlighten our souls in the process."
How one playground renovation inspired another The Erenbeh School wasn’t the only one to get a makeover by King’s this year. A new cocurricular, The Power of a Gesture (or Lafteh Gawieh in Arabic), organized a sale last fall to raise money to renovate the playground at Al Namouzajieh School in Madaba. The playground was seriously lacking in any games or equipment, but its teachers and students were proactive in coming up with alternative ways to play, such as by painting a football net on the wall in lieu of
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the real thing. (This resourcefulness provided the inspiration for the playground renovation at Erenbeh School!) Upon visiting Al Namouzajieh School, King’s students started by asking the kids to draw pictures of their “dream playground.” Then, to make that dream come true, King’s students organized the fundraiser with support from the peer counselors and the Parent Council. Over 250 students, faculty, parents and staff turned up to purchase baked goods, plants, artwork
and other items promoting wellness and positivity. The sale reached its goal, raising around 1,000 JOD that was used to purchase sports and recreational equipment for Al Namouzajieh School. Following the renovation, which provided the students with their much improved “dream” playground, students taking the Creative Outlets co-curricular organized a fun-day with the kids to celebrate the new playground with fun and “colorful” activities.
own community in problem-solving. They could, for example, identify the expertise within their parent groups in order to call on parents for future support. What started as a junior service initiative proved to be an exercise in teamwork and community building within and beyond the King’s community.
“Community service might be a onetime thing,” says Dakhil. “Community engagement is different. Even at King’s Academy, we need to think creatively and engage our community for support. Although we can’t solve all of Erenbeh School’s problems, we are part of their community. We are simply one school trying to help out another school.”
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But the support to Erenbeh School did not stop there. Haddad and Nada Dakhil, King’s director of wellness and advising, knew that simply offering a few days of service would not be a sustainable solution for the school in the long run. With that in mind, they offered to host an interactive capacitybuilding workshop on resourcefulness for the school’s headmistress and teachers. The aim was to foster a culture of problem-solving at the school, rather than relying on others to provide solutions. During the workshop, held under the theme “Empowered by my ideas, efforts and community,” the teachers came up with ways to troubleshoot some of the challenges they faced using the resources available to them. Among the challenges, which ranged from curriculum issues to lack of resources, was a bare playground. The school also lacks a main gate, making it impossible to secure any playground equipment. To overcome this challenge, after the workshop the teachers worked together in a show of school spirit to paint simple playground games on the ground and walls, such as hopscotch and a football net. They also discussed other ways to raise school spirit, how to take better care of the resources they already have, and how to engage their
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