Kids Helping Kids

Zac's Pencil Project (Year 1)

Zac's Pencil Project (Year 3)

My name is Zac Gordon and this is my 3rd year doing the Pencil Project. I will be travelling to Koru, Kenya for the third time next June and I’m collecting pencils to bring with me to give to the children at the Menara School where my family and I volunteer. I hope to bring a lot of pencils because the children there really need them! They have almost no school supplies and their teachers have only a piece of chalk and an old chalkboard to teach them. Last year I collected over 2000 pencils from the Rashi School. When I arrived at the Menara School for the first time to volunteer, I was surprised that there were 60 kids in a class with only 1 teacher. All of the children there are nice but there was one child who stood out. His name is Bornface. Bornface and I decided to be pen pals and write each other letters. I was inspired by my sister Isabel who thought up the pen pal idea. Please help me reach my goal to collect 5000 pencils for the Menara School in Kenya. Giving each child a pencil shows that we care and it gives them a tool to do their school work which will help them succeed in life. We can make a real difference!

Gussie's Marathon Mitzvah

Izzy’s Teaching Experience

Isabel Gordon! Throw you into a dilapidated classroom in a rural village in Kenya with sixty, fourth-graders and, when your adult co-teacher is summoned to work on a different project, you take over the classroom without hesitation.  It never occurs to you that you are only 11.  When asked if you need an adult to help you, you exclaim, “I’m all set.”  In a flash, the sixty children are playing “Simon Says,” laughing so loudly we can hear them in the schoolyard, all the while improving their English language skills.  Soon you are organizing an arts and crafts project for them.  And, before your day is through, you are reading a story to the children from the E-readers.  The children loved you so much that the father of one of the children came to the school yard the next day to gift you a live chicken that you promptly named Rose. 

Cami Hallagan’s Teaching Experience

The screech of the brakes filled my ears as the car slows down. People and noises envelop me as my gaze shifts around the area like a panorama. As my feet step off the only familiar object in sight I get excited. The culture is rich in every blink of an eye. Our group slowly proceeds to the social center for the Kenyans in koru. Their market. Our large procession gradually moves towards each stall occasionally stopping to look or to ponder the differences from our Roche Brothers to their market. Stall by stall built with sticks and passion hoping to sell their goods. Stares cloak our cluster as our white bodies cause more commotion than the objects around them. “White person! White person!,” They would yell at us like we were the most bizarre things out there, which to them we were. Hellos greeted us when we moved on from each fragile stall. Tomatoes were wanted, to a vegetable stall we went. Tomatoes, green peppers, and onion too, all to make our delicious meal. When purchasing food you must bargain, lowering the price from obscene to reasonable. We sluggishly moved forward toward other stalls encased in culture from the secondary clothes from home or the traditional dresses. They had turned our culture into their own. It was enriching and inspiring to be there. We finally realized how different we were from them. Not just our fluorescent white skin or our touristy outfits, but how we talked and acted, our mannerism, and our overall presence. That trip, to just a market, changed me. I realized the connectedness of human beings, no matter how foreign or different from me.

Pen Pal Program

The Pen Pal program based on the efforts of the kids on the volunteer trips to Koru in 2012.  Pen pals from The Rashi School in Dedham, MA and The Park School in Brookline exchanged letters with their peers at Menara Primary School.  Students would write back and forth approximately four times per year sharing news from their lives, asking questions of one another, and drawing pictures of themselves and their families.  Of particular note was after the Boston Marathon bombing in 2013, Menara students wrote kind letters and sent pictures to the Boston area students saying “Stay Strong Boston” and “We are one - Boston - Kenya.”

Our Pot of Wisdom by Oketch Aoko Richard

From the land yonder
To the great land of Obama’s ancestors
Came the pot of wisdom, the e-reader
Out of which we get e-learning
Out of which we get empowered
Out of which we get enlightened
Our pot of wisdom – the e-reader!

Our pot of wisdom is light and handy
And very easy to use
Our pot of wisdom is fresh
The latest technology at our fingertips
It’s hi-tech! It’s tech savvy! Its wow! Its poa!
Our pot of wisdom – the e-reader!

Who can ‘buogo’ us?
What can outdo it?
In here is the Bible, the world’s best-seller
In here is the atlas and dictionary
In fact five of them
In here are thousands of stories
Fiction and non-fiction, fairy tales,
Adventure, biographies, humour,
Not forgetting the numerous textbooks

Understanding Science, Kiswahili mufti,
Golden Tips at our finger tips
Our pot of wisdom – the e-reader!

We are digital not analogue!
We are smart kids sponsored by smart minds!
We are the happy Menara well-fed kids!
A big pot of thanks to the Ouko Family. ‘Merci beau coup!’
Hi Mama Christabel! Hi Susan! ‘Mpo?’
A big pot of thanks to the Gordon Family,
Hi Allison,’Habari yako?’
A bit pot of thanks to the Barkan Family, ‘Jambo!’
Hi Laura, with full tummies we can read…and read…and read!
A big pot of thanks to the Trefler Family, ‘Sukran!’
Hi Pam! You flooded us with many e-readers!
A big pot of thanks to our teachers and parents, ‘ero kamano!’
We swear we shall not let you down!
And finally, a big pot of thanks to God, ‘Amen!’
For our young budding lives
And these generous and precious friends
With the opportunity you have given all of us
Wings to fly to our dreams!!!