Students Come Together To Help a Big Issue

The heart-warming tale of how Warwick Students came together to raise over £1000 for Sammy, the big issue guy, in under three days to fund his sisters funeral. Hats off guys!

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Scroll down for a Thank You message from Sammy

The news of his sister’s death at only 29 was devastating for Sammy who was now left to pay for a funeral costing around £900 alongside responsibilities of supporting and caring for his family, including his mother.

But when second year Comparative American Studies student Jordan Kelly-Tams set up a funeral fund to help Sammy out, some of Sammy’s burden was taken away.

We have all seen Sammy around campus and it’s great to see Warwick’s contributions to him

Many of you have already been invited to the Facebook event organised by Jordan in a campus community attempt to raise as much money as possible for Sammy. Due to the generosity of Warwick students, we have raised significantly more than the £900 needed to cover the cost of the funeral, donating a staggering total of £1,174 in just three days.

The thoughtfulness of normally budget-wary students, especially at the tough time of exams, is seriously heart-warming. After talking to Jordan you quickly realise we need many more of these sort of guys out there. Talking to us about Sammy’s reaction, he said that Sammy felt the “student population has been keeping him going since he moved to this country but that to see all that help and support in such a large sum was phenomenal.”

Sammy himself possesses indescribable gratitude for your help, declaring “we have enough to eat for a long time and that is good for me, praise be to God.”

Sammy is extremely thankful for everyone’s contributions on the online fund: “we have enough to eat for a long time and that is good for me, praise be to God.”

Your donations have enabled him to fly back to Romania next week and to present your donations to a tragedy-stricken ordinary family.  This is definitely an example of community power, especially the ability of a group of dedicated students to encourage and essentially, create change in the local area surrounding the University.

Hopefully news of this will bring a smile to your face, as so many are pessimistically convinced that in the time of economic hardship not only as students, but society as a whole, people become less community centred. The exceeding of the fundraising target for Sammy demonstrates that the spirit of giving is still alive today.

“I think…we are too used to seeing charity as something that has to come with a registered trademark and a logo that makes you feel comfortable.”- Jordan Kelly-Tams

Jordan agreed that there must have been some initial scepticism of the campaign, especially since it was the “first time that an individual had decided to do anything” like this before. The reception of the campaign on social media also showed doubts, with people tweeting concerns that Sammy may have been “having us on.”

Despite this, the money raised demonstrates a continuing faith in campaigning, even though the fundraising was not towards a large, publicised and well-known charity. To sum up the whole success of the campaign, as stated by Jordan:

“One thing that I felt throughout this experience especially when donations started to come flooding into my bank account was real appreciation that the student body had entrusted me with their money. There was some initial trepidation but once it got going it just exploded, so that was really heartening. I think that sums up the good community feel we have at Warwick, it’s like when you leave your wallet on the U1 or in the library, you just trust that someone will hand it in. So I wished to thank everyone for that.”

Thank you all to those who donated and for those that organised this campaign, hopefully Warwick students can fundraise on such a scale for other worthy causes in the future.

And to all those out there who generalise the younger generation as a selfish bunch, well here you go; put that in your pipe and smoke it!

To see Sammy’s gratitude, please watch his personal video which includes the organiser himself: