This document provides suggestions for organizing a "Make a Difference Day" event at a school. It recommends dividing students into teams to brainstorm community needs and ways they can help. Each team then plans a presentation on their proposed activity. Examples include assisting the elderly, organizing recycling drives, or collecting food donations. The document also shares two examples of activities from the author's school in Slovakia - an annual charity run and visiting an asylum to donate toys and food. Finally, it outlines the process used at a school in Denmark where students sign up to participate in various volunteer workshops on a designated "Make a Difference Day," such as working with refugee camps, nature organizations, or nursing homes. The goal is to raise awareness of how students

1. Make a Difference Day
Suggestion - How to organize it 
1. Divide your students into teams and let them brainstorm the ideas „How
can we help ...“(what is a need or problem of the community...)
2. Let them discuss and choose one idea and prepare presentation with
following points:
 What can we do
 For whom
 What do we need for it
 How much time do we need to organize it
 How much money do we need, where we can get money ….
3. After presenting and discussion, choose one activity or more and begin
to organize J
Example: assistance to the elderly or disabled with chores, coordinate a
recycling activity, clean up the surroundings of the school or public park,
collect food for homeless….
What we did in my school Hotel Academy, Bratislava
1. My students organize charity run every year and invite all schools to join. This
year we had almost 600 runners and donated Women in Action organization in
Sierra Leone. We sent them 1707€ for the education of children.
2. We visited asylum for children and mothers and gave them toys and food and
spend the whole day with them with animation activities.

2. Ideas from Charlotte Straby Tranberg, Oerestad Gymnasium,
Kopenhagen
It originated from a tradition all Danish upper secondary schools have. One
day a year, first Wednesday in November, we have a day called ”Operations
Dagsværk, ”work for a day”
It’s an organisation which donates money for education to various places in
the world. A new area or project each year. This year the money went to
Somalia. The idea is that every student who participate work for one day and
donates the money earned to this organisation. The minimum amount is 45
euroes, 300,- Dkr. It started in the 1980’s. All classes are cancelled in order
for you to work, but it is normally voluntary if you want to participate.
Since we didn’t want to force someone to support something they perhaps
don’t agree with, we came up with the idea of ”make a difference day”.
So we have various workshops that day, some are organised by students,
some by teachers, some are global, other local and other again internal at the
school.
We organize it this way:
In September we get proposals for workshops, agreements with partners and
organizations from outside the school need to be made.
In October students sign up for a workshop

3. First Wednesday in November we have the day.
Examples of workshops:
 Red cross (working for red cross – get to know what kind of
organization it is and how you can help them in voluntary work)
 A refugee camp nearby (students went to the camp to talk about Danish
culture and traditions)
 The Danish Society for Nature Conservation (ask what an organization
like this wants from young people)
 First help course
 Teaching math to primary school children
 Organizing a football match for kids who can’t afford to play in a club
 Workshop for dialogue between religions
 We had ”bake a cake and donate the money you collect when you offer
the cake for ”FREE”
 Workshop – “make soup and bring it for free to homeless people
 Little Big help – workshop – that by doing small things you can make a
big difference
 Amnesty – workshop
 Generations meet – we go to an old people’s home. Our students teach
the elders how to use a smart phone or Ipad, the elders teach our
students to knit, play cards, telling stories about how it was to be young
years ago.

4.  Political communication, work as a voluntary in Ghana, integration at
Nørrebro (part of Cph), meet the human library, dialogue about
discrimination and many more.
I guess only your fantasy and connections can limit the kind of workshop you
make.
The main idea is to open the eyes of our students, so that they become aware
of the world and how much the world needs everyone to make a difference
and the give input to what kind of difference I can contribute with.
It is also an opportunity to let students organize workshops, to be in touch
with partners outside school, both in a local and global perspective.