Christmas ornaments for education

There's a Christmas fund-raising project going on in our school right now. For every P200 (US$5) donation, you get a Christmas ball that you can have personalized with a name of your choice and it gets hung on a 10-foot Christmas tree in the lobby of the main administration building. The money goes to a fund which provides assistance to currently enrolled students who run into financial problems in the middle of their schooling, like a death in the family, a failed business and the like. Though the project itself won't raise much—definitely not enough for even one semester's tuition—it's really a marketing project to raise awareness about the fund. And the tree's pretty—it's providing a little Christmas cheer in a building that has never had Christmas decorations in the seven years that I've been here.


The staff of the office heading the project personalize the Christmas balls. Of course, when I got mine, I insisted on bringing them home and doing them myself. I named them for three of my nieces (they live in a different country) and I chose balls of the same color—I didn't want anyone complaining about why I chose that color for her! But I did use different colors of glitter glue for the names, hearts and snowflakes (there are snowflakes on the other hemisphere which you can't see from this angle). There's a slight difficulty with the glitter glue, however. When you apply it thickly, it can actually peel off when it's dry. I may have to re-do some letters before the season's over.

So now, my nieces' Christmas ornaments are on the tree and I get to take them home on January 7 when classes resume and the tree goes down. I'll just re-use them if the same project's done next year. That will give me enough time to embellish the ornaments some more.