Operation Juvi is a student-initiated humanitarian project started in 2010 after the 2009 Sumatra earthquakes and 2009 fire in metro Manila, providing the needy clothes donated from Ngee Ann Poly's staff and students. This is the second year in running and they are aiming to collect 10,000 pieces of clothes!
Joel, a Year 2 student from the School of Business & Accountancy, and volunteer of this project explained that the project name came from the latin word 'Juvi', which means 'Aid' in English. To date, the project has provided clothes to poverty-stricken areas in neighbouring countries such as the Philippines and Indonesia, and has further plans to include countries such as Malaysia in future.
"They live in poor living conditions and they are lacking in basic necessities such as clothes. As such, the donation of clothes would provide them of some relief and to assure them that they are not forgotten and there are still people who care for them," Joel said.
Rather than collecting donations in the form of food or money, they decided that clothes is a better choice as it was a necessity. On top of that, it's easy to encourage people to donate used clothes as there are many who have clothes that they no longer wear or want.
The clothes are all piled up together in one room.
As a firm believer that the donations will go a long way in helping the people in those countries, Joel told me that the people there are suffering from poverty and some are even still recovering from the effects of natural disasters.
"Disasters will always occur. Natural disasters are real and recurring in the Philippines. They are hit about 20 times a year. And as a result has displaced many Filipinos, destroyed buildings and driven a more than a few hundred thousandof them into poverty. The people there are also trying to move on with their lives and living in areas with very few facilities with little clothing and food," he says.
Operation Juvi Team working together to split the task
Students working hard to organize the clothes into different categories
And it's not just NP students that Joel and his team are gathering clothes from. Over the past few weeks, the team has sought the help of secondary schools here and would be collecting the bags of items from them.
If you think it all stops at collecting and gathering clothing donations from the public, the process is more tedious than that! After the mass collection from the public, the team goes on to sort the clothes by gender and the category of clothing (i.e. shorts, skirts, shirts, etc.) and then send the boxes over to the organisation that they're working with, before being transported overseas.
They are currently working with HighPoint, an organisation that aims to help rebuild lives of people in need, especially ex-offenders and their families. In this case, HighPoint is helping the people in the needy countries in collaboration with Operation Juvi.
Carefully labelled and categorised!
Joel is also heartened by the eagerness of the students who donated the clothes, saying "the reception has been good and our own students have been very helpful in taking some of their precious time to pack their clothes. I'm also glad that they make the effort to bring them to school to donate it".
Joel Tan, the Year 2 Business & Accountancy student who decided to follow up Operation Juvi 2011
When asked if they would be able to successfully gather 10,000 pieces of clothes, Joel replies with a smile, "I believe that we can hit that goal. After all, nothing is impossible." As of now, there's no future plans for Operation Juvi (next year) because the students would be starting on their internship soon and it would be difficult to organize any plans.
"So what was the most interesting piece of clothing that you've collected thus far?" I asked.
"We have collected many unique clothing such as traditional dresses but the most interesting piece to me would be a super large sized baju kurung. It could fit two people in it!"
