By: Sanjana Nallapati

At the American International School of Kingston (AISK) in Jamaica,
grades 6-10 have a course called Strategies of Success (SoS). This Subject
includes Social & emotional learning, Digital citizenship and many more
topics to encourage students to lead healthy and happy lives. This subject is
claimed to be a “stress-free” class as it is a place where you share your
thoughts, ideas and passions in a judgment-free environment.
As part of this class, students are asked to complete a passion project
where they are given the time to work on anything of their choice. This course is encouraging because it allows students to explore their interests, while still
having a “structured” format in which to do it.

For my passion project this year, I wanted to work with a charity project
in order to put some smiles on people's faces by showing love and
appreciation for the work they do, which is why I chose the nurses in the
pediatric ward at the University Hospital of the West Indies (UHWI). These
nurses work incredibly hard to treat children who need medical attention.
Unfortunately, they are not given enough credit for all the work they do;
which is why I have asked some very special people for some help in funding
and donating products so that they could help me in creating 115 packages
for each pediatric nurses. Usually, the children are the ones that get the gifts
after getting better but really and truly, the nurses are the ones that make
sure they get their health back in check. From this project, I have realized how
much of an impact and this had on the nurses, which encourages me to
continue doing projects like this. This was done successfully and all of the
nurses were very happy, appreciative, and encouraged to continue to save
young lives.