“One of the biggest things we’ve learned is the difficulty many [refugees] have when integrating into the American school system and so we want to make it as easy as possible for them,” sophomore Aashi Oswal said. “Now our project has taken root and grown into something amazing.” 

A small idea for a summer volunteering day has transformed into thousands of dollars fundraised for a group made by sophomores Aashi Oswal, Ellen Li, and Anvi Saxena. The three now stand as founders of their own project, Rallying for Refugees, which aims to ease the settlement of refugees in the DFW area. 

“So initially the project started when the three of us went to do some tutoring at the Northwest Community Center,” Oswal said. “However, the impact and connections we formed with the refugee kids was too good to just leave at one tutoring session. So we started working more with them and soon enough our project began to take root and it had grown into something amazing.”

The small goal of tutoring soon grew into an effort to provide over $4,000 in overall relief for the newly relocated refugees according to Li. 

“Now we are easing refugees through donations in the form of money, resources, and books,” she said. “We have raised more than 1k in books, and had various tutoring sessions as well. At this point our next goal is to establish Rallying for Refugees as a nonprofit organization.”

In the eyes of Saxena, the growth of the organization could not have been possible without the group’s supportive community and staff members. 

To her, the success the chapter has encountered thus far has only given the group momentum in reaching out towards more in the community. 

“So our community has played a big role in helping us achieve our goals so far,” Saxena said. “We want to continue and increase the involvement of our community in our project. We plan on doing this by starting high school chapters around the DFW area that work towards the same cause at their school. We also want to increase our outreach and have schools in other states participating in this initiative as well.”