Tornadoes are one of the most ferocious forces that nature throws our way. In 2013, one tornado that was a mile wide struck Joplin, Missouri, killing 161 people and devastating the local community. Six local schools were ravaged and had to be rebuilt, including the city's only high school. Luckily, insurance covered the reconstruction.
The schools struggled, however, to recoup the lost books and equipment that had been lost to the raging winds of the tornado.
A man working for the United Arab Emirates Embassy in Washington called the Joplin public school system and offered an unexpected hand: "Tell me what you need," he said.
The staff at the UAE embassy wanted "to think big," so instead of replacing the textbooks that the local authorities struggled to fund even before the disaster, they came up with a plan with the school system's devlopment director to give every student a laptop.
And so to this day, nearly 2,200 Joplin high school students have MacBook laptops thanks to the United Arab Emirates, which they use to enhance their education experience and better prepare for their future.
The kind donations by the UAE were motivated by the United States' foreign assistance programmes that help less fortunate communities who are in need.