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Richmond 'Brothers' helping others less fortunate

They’re not brothers — not by blood anyway — but they are all about helping others less fortunate.
Brothers
The Cambie secondary’s Brothers Helping Others group are: (on couch) Birk Zukowsky, (from left) Amar Deol, Omeid Niyaz, Kareem el-Wishahy, Kyle Sangha and Aditya Patel. The boys are sending school supplies to Afghanistan this summer. Photo submitted

They’re not brothers — not by blood anyway — but they are all about helping others less fortunate.

A 15-strong group of all-male, mainly Grade 10 Cambie secondary students, called “Brothers Helping Others,” have been fundraising for various local causes for three years.

In the spring of this year, however, the Brothers decided to spread their wings a little more and set their sights on helping fellow students in an underprivileged part of the world.

So, they set up a coin drive of sorts, where they asked every single class in the school to search for loose change in their bags and at home.

The result: $431 that has been turned into 100 individual school supply packs that will be delivered in person by one of the Brothers to a school in Afghanistan.

“We wanted to try to help kids around our age; kids that don’t have the same chance that we do,” said one of the Brothers Helping Others founders, Amar Deol.

“We learned that Afghanistan has the third lowest percentage in the world of people who are literate (32 per cent).

“We wanted to help, but we were scared that just sending the money over to these places, some of it may get taken up by other people.”

It then became apparent to the group that one of them, Omeid Niyaz, was going to Uzbekistan, which borders Afghanistan, on vacation to visit family this summer.

“Omeid said he could make a trip over to Afghanistan with the school supplies while he was there,” added Deol.

Niyaz, who leaves on July 15, said he’s not yet picked out the school that will receive the packages — each containing one notebook, a few pencils, a pen, an eraser, and a sharpener.

“The plan is to travel over the border with my uncle, who knows the area very well, and we will pick out the school when we get there,” said Niyaz.

“If, for some reason, I can’t get over the border, then (my uncle) will take the supplies over and deliver them to a school.”

Looking forward, Brothers Helping Others want to continue their good work by involving the community more and they are going to leave a donation box at Cambie Community Centre over the summer to collect money towards similar projects.

“We will check the statistical sources again and see where our efforts might go next time,” added Deol.

“But we definitely think, as a community, we can do a lot more to help others as there are many people in need in the world, and sometimes they can be forgotten.”