Rachel Oh

NJ, USA
BBS 2019

“For two weeks, I was stretched beyond my comfort zone and was challenged with finding friends, making decisions, and learning new, exciting material on scientific concepts I never knew of before.”

HOPE is a school club which stands for Happiness, Opportunities, and Prosperity for Everyone. In this club, there are many charity initiatives taking place to try to help our school community as well as people all around the world. One such initiative is Operation Christmas Child, a project led by an international relief organization that fills shoeboxes with toys, school supplies, and hygienic items and ships these boxes to children affected by poverty, war, disease, natural disaster, and famine. 

In 2019, both myself and my classmate, Jessie Fan, decided to take leadership over this project. For me, this project was something very special because I had traveled to Bolivia on a missionary trip and I had first handedly seen children faced with adversities beyond my imagination. These children were grateful for even a toothbrush and cherished everything they had; I was determined at that point to try to increase the size of this project at our school for children like the kids in Bolivia. For our school, we decided to collect items for boys from ages 10 to 14 because they are the age group who receives the least amount of boxes every year.

On the packing day, about 20 HOPE club students gathered to put the boxes together. One team wrapped boxes, one team packed items, one team made holiday cards with heartwarming messages, and one team loaded the boxes onto the truck. Together, we surpassed our goal of 25 boxes and made a total of 34 boxes. It was absolutely amazing. 

Ambassador Year: 
2019