Operation Dagsverke, Värmdö, Sweden

Operation Dagsverke is an information and collection campaign










The organization was formed in 1961 and since then they have collected over a 100 million crowns. Operation Dagsverke is an organization where children all over Sweden collect money to the benefit of other children. The organization is spread all over the world today. There are many schools involved; their goal is to make a difference in the world. The money should go to poor children, children that don’t have the same chances like us. Every child should have the opportunity to go to school, but in the world we are living in today, that’s not something you can take for granted..

Operation Dagsverke’s message to the world is that “Children help children”. Every child is making money on their own by working at different places. They are doing that because they want to.

Schools all over the world are only doing this once a year, so in my opinion I think we should give them everything we earn that day. There are so many kids out there and they need us, many of us here in Sweden don’t think that making money is necessary; they think that we are just wasting our time. But that’s not true, if every school in Sweden would be involved, that would give so many children a better chance for a fair way of living.

Operation Dagsverke is a unique collection, because all the work is made by pupils. Education is the ground in our society, that’s why it’s so important that we work for justice. Operation Dagsverke is focusing on different things every year, they are focusing on countries that are in special needs. It’s a good way for us in Sweden to learn about other countrie’s situations, we have to realize how unfair the world is.

When I attended 9th grad in compulsory school, we left school for one day in May to work and collect money to kids in Kongo. I was working at home, painted our fence. My mother and father gave me 200 crowns for that, and I gave it all to my school. Of course that’s not a big sum, but it can make a difference because we were over 300 pupils at the senior level of compulsory school.

I hope the children were very pleased by our contribution. I wish that I could have seen their faces when our gifts arrived and when their new schools was build. I like to help people that are in a need, particularly children. I feel for them and it means a lot to me to be able to give them something, even if it isn’t something big.

Operation Dagsverke isn’t only a good way to collect money, because you are doing something fun at the same time. We could choose all by ourselves what we wanted to do that day, no one controlled us. The most important thing was just that we were making money to all those poor children.

If you keep all the starving children on your mind, you would do your best to make as much money as possible. I thought of all the children that don’t have any parents, who are living on their own, their lives are like hell, maybe they are living on the streets, and who doesn’t want to help them? If I could I would have taken them all to my place and fed them with everything I had in my refrigerator, but I couldn’t and I knew it. But I’m glad that the children aren’t giving up, instead they are fighting for a normal life.

The projects are always education-related, sometimes it’s about building new schools, and sometimes it can be to develop the schools. To be able to go to school is the start of everything and that is why operation dagsverke is so focused on that point.

In the future I hope I can be a volunteer worker in Africa and help children to get a better life. My mother and I already have plans to go there when I have graduated from high school.
Emelie 17