Year 6 classes stand up for humanity as part of a Serve the city project

As always, we had to be at school at 8 o’clock in the morning. When all the children were there, we met in the classroom beforehand so that the day’s activities could be explained to us. First we had to make sandwiches (toast with butter and ham or cheese) and pack parcels. The three mums who were there as volunteers also sorted the old clothes we had brought with us. Meanwhile, coffee was being made in the kitchen and poured into the thermos flasks. Once we had filled everything into our Trollis and organised ourselves into our groups, we walked towards the bus.

At the station, we took the 77 Kraainem bus to the Kraainem terminus and from there took the metro to Gare du l’Ouest. The three groups already had predetermined stops where we should go and my group (with Mr Flohn) got off first at Merode. We didn’t see any homeless people there yet.

So we took the metro to Schuman and saw five homeless people there. First we offered the men coffee and a sandwich before we approached more homeless people with clothes and more care packages filled with water, small cakes and tissues.

We then made our way to Louise station and unfortunately saw one of the first homeless people with a mobile phone in a restaurant on the way there.

After we had eaten and rested, we went on to Porte d’Hal and had already emptied almost all the sandwiches and a whole trolli full of parcels.

From Porte d’Hal we went on to our last stop – Gare du Midi. When we got there, we found another group of homeless people to feed.

It was nice to see how happy the homeless people were when we gave them food etc. A few homeless people also told us how they ended up on the street. It was sometimes very sad to hear their stories. For example, some of them found it very difficult to survive in their home country and therefore came to Brussels. One homeless woman told us that she had lost her husband, who earned the money, so she had to live on the streets from then on. That’s why you shouldn’t be prejudiced against them.

It was a very special and enlightening experience, especially because you learn to pay more attention to the homeless instead of just walking past them.

Liya Mohni