South Brunswick Teens Buy iPads For Local Hospitals

MONMOUTH JUNCTION, NJ — A group of high school students at the Noor-Ul-Iman Islamic school in South Brunswick started an online fundraiser to buy iPads, so hospitalized COVID patients can talk and FaceTime with their loved ones.

So far, the students have raised more than $7,000 through their GoFundMe page, and placed an order for the first batch of ten iPads, which should be delivered by the end of the week.

"The idea for this project originated on a FaceTime call where all of us were talking about the current situation regarding COVID-19, and we wanted to do something," said one of the students, Hiba Jamil, from South Brunswick.

She is doing the project with Anisah Mahmood and Hafsa Rahaman, both of South Brunswick, and Simra Arshad, from Lawrenceville and Yasmeen Sakr, from West Windsor. The teens are all high school juniors.

The students named their group Students Serving Central Jersey. The contacted area hospitals and asked them what they most needed.

The first 10 iPads will be donated to St. Peter’s University Hospital, Penn Medicine Princeton Medical Center, and Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital locations in Hamilton, Somerset, and New Brunswick.

"Most of us have some friends or extended family members who have unfortunately gotten coronavirus," said Jamil. "One of us heard a story about how one of our family friend's uncle had coronavirus. They told us what got them through the difficult time was being able to see his condition and check up on him when the doctors and nurses would FaceTime. They said being able to have seen him in his last moments made the loss a lot easier."

"A lot of campaigns were already set up to donate things like food and PPE," said the students. "However, we saw that iPad funds were something that had been done in other states like New York, but not in New Jersey yet. We reached out to businesses and suppliers in New Jersey. That way we could get iPads for the hospitals and also benefit a local business by buying their products."

For any questions, or if you know of any other hospital that needs iPads, contact the teens at sscentraljersey@gmail.com.