One of Serene's paintings.

There can be no act more touching than doing something to save a loved one. This was exactly what 15-year-old student Serene Al-Hariqi did by helping pay the mounting medical bills of her terminally ill mother Lina Yerro, who is a nurse.
Lina is from Iloilo on the Visayan Islands in Central Philippines; and she had been ill with colon cancer and confined at the South Pasadena Cancer Center since Oct. 19, 2011.

“A very talented girl, she came up with drawings. From these drawings depicting various subjects close to her heart, Serene came up with 15 paintings in watercolors on canvas,” her father Saleh Al-Hariqi told Arab News. Al-Hariqi is currently working at the Ministry of Education’s Computer Technology Center in Al-Rass, Qassim,

Last Tuesday, Serene mounted a one-woman show at her school, Second Mediterian School in Al-Rass, with the assistance of teacher Monira Al-Obishi who coordinated all the activities for the exhibition, and principal Huda Al-Sohibani. The exhibition was entitled “My hands wipe my sadness.”

To ensure attendance for the show, Al-Obishi called local art connoisseurs, well-to-do people who could afford to buy artworks and others sympathetic to Serene’s cause. One of them was Al-Ras Gov. Khaled Al-Assaf and his wife Sultanah who paid SR 10,000 for a painting and served as the guest of honor. The show was for women only.

“Others paid different amounts for various paintings, from SR1,000 up. Some of them bought the paintings out of sympathy for Serene and my family. An entry fee of SR 100 per guest was also collected,” Al-Hariqi told Arab News.

read more here: http://arabnews.com/saudiarabia/article625035.ece