Proceeds from annual school celebration donated to support the Australian Bushfire Appeal

Sharjah, United Arab Emirates - 27 January 2020 - The Victoria International School of Sharjah (VISS), a premium school offering the Australian Curriculum and the IB diploma, celebrates Australia Day with their annual Sausage Sizzle. This year’s Australia day became a campaign to raise funds for the catastrophic bushfires spreading throughout Australia. 

Dean Pyrah, Executive Principal of VISS said, “This is an event we put together every year, and clearly this year it made sense to link it to the bushfire tragedy and raise awareness amongst our community with our traditional Australian Day Sausage Sizzle. The students and parents have been extremely supportive and generous. Many in our community have been asking how they can assist with the devastating bushfires in Australia. Having the Red Crescent here as part of this has helped us provide an avenue to help. It has been wonderful to see everyone coming together. It really shows what we can do and how we all can have an impact.”

Taking to the #MatesHelpMates slogan, students, parents and teachers of the VISS community generously came together and sold over 1,600 sausages in just 6 minutes with all proceeds made from the family event given to Emirates Red Crescent, a UAE affiliate charity of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies. Together with the partners, VISS also sold #MatesHelpMates merchandise designed to match the Australian and UAE flags. Through the joint efforts, the school raised over AED 30,000 on the day and will continue to generate more funds all through the rest of January.

Mohamed Murad, VISS School Captain said, “As an Australian, it has been hard to witness all that is taking place back home and feel useless for not be able to do something to help. However with this great event, students from ELC all the way to grade 12 have been able to contribute and support and make even the smallest of impacts. It been great in two ways; to raise awareness and help everyone back home, but also help the students really understand how large these world issues really are”.

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