Sixth grader Yasmine Haddad knew how she was being impacted by the novel coronavirus, but she wondered how other children around the world felt. To find an answer, she completed a project where she interviewed children around the world to see how COVID-19 has impacted their lives.

On Jan. 31, 2020, President Trump issued an order banning the travel of any non-US citizens that had traveled to China in the within the last 14 days.

“On February 27, my mom’s host-sister from Japan sent a message that all schools in Japan were closed until the end of March to prevent the spread of the Coronavirus,” Haddad wrote. “She also sent pictures of the masks she made at home because it was no longer possible to find any masks to purchase.”

Haddad recognizes that COVID- 19 has not only impacted Asia and America, but the whole globe. From this pandemic, around 50 million kids are unable to currently attend school due to safety concerns.

“What’s it like for other children around the world? I thought it would be interesting to find out,” Haddad wrote. “I came up with some interview questions and my mom helped me translate them into Japanese, Arabic, Spanish and French. We sent them to friends and family with school-aged children that live in different countries.”

In Haddad’s history class, she has learned about how much a worldwide pandemic can negatively impact people.

“For example, in World War II, the lives of people in the United States were impacted differently from the lives of people living in England, Germany, Poland or Japan,” Haddad wrote. “How you experience a world event largely depends upon where you live. Growing up in America, it has always felt like we are exempt from events impacting the rest of the world.”

Haddad did not realize that an event like COVID-19 could impact America as much as it has, with over 1.82 million confirmed cases in the U.S. alone. She used to feel comfort that COVID-19 was something that was only going to impact China and Asia, but then it became more than that.

“On March 12, Archer announced that we would be moving to online learning. I was in shock. Quite honestly, I am still in shock. This is the first time that my life has been severely impacted by a world event,” Haddad said.

In her project, Haddad explains how kids and families have been affected by COVID-19 and said she wants to bring awareness to the world using her voice

“It turned out to be a lot of work, and I didn’t get as many responses as I had hoped, but what I did get was eye-opening,” Haddad wrote. “As we grow up to inherit the world from our parents, I hope that we remember this simple notion and remember that as a world, we are more similar than we are different.”

Watch Haddad’s project in the video above this story or on YouTube here.