It all happened very spontaneously, prior to the evening of Boxing Day, we as second year law students hadn’t even thought about l-Istrina, let alone intended to collect any money. At about 19:00 a student named Rowena sent a photo of the different pledge lines to the group chat (of all the second year law students). 

However this photo went unnoticed until an hour after others joined her effort. Another student, Mariella encouraged the students to send a small token of €2, and slowly slowly a consensus was reached, that being that we wanted to contribute. 

Following this a Revolut vault was set up, and students started contributing to this vault. We started off by people sending €2 each, when we realised that a lot of money was being collected, we just started donating more money.

The vault amount was being updated on the group chat every 10 minutes, and to everyone’s surprise this number grew exponentially. From €2, to €100 to over €1,000 in literally an hour.

We as students then started collecting from our family members and other friends (not being in the second year law course), and large donations were being received, in fact there were several donations exceeding the amount of €50. Not a few but many! When we saw this amount increasing we decided to go to hand in a cheque. The money didn’t stop coming in, even on the way in our cars and taxis we kept calling friends and families, and this number kept on growing. In a matter of 2 hours (at 10 o’clock) the number had well exceeded €2,000 and by the time we arrived at the studios of l-Istrina we had even surpassed €3,000. 

Eventually, a family member of a law student, who was following our progress, who wished to remain anonymous loved our initiative, and generously rounded up our figure to €5,000! We all were stunned. In 2 hours we collected €5,000!

Our year is very united, we always help out each other and we were so proud to help those who are really in need. Next year we plan on beating this amount by planning a month ahead.

We understand and appreciate that the money collected by l-Istrina can be a matter of life or death to individuals and thus the greater the amount the more lives saved. Christmas is about giving, and we students with a little bit of conviction gave €5,000 and we all agreed that handing the cheque was the best moment that captured the spirit of Christmas.

By Thomas Sciberras Herrera