Eagle Crest students connect with African sister school

The students at Eagle Crest Elementary School take it for granted that their school has desks, windows and walls, a roof and concrete floors.

But they are finding out that those things are considered luxuries in some parts of the world.

Eagle Crest Elementary fifth graders Geneva Notario, 11, left, and Elizabeth Elton, 10, look at letters, photos and drawings they received from their sister school in Zambia. Kira Horvath photo

In October, Eagle Crest students elected to become a “sister” school with the Mapampi School in Kalomo, Zambia, Africa. Students have been holding fundraisers since October to collect funds for the school for items such as textbooks, paper, art supplies and pencils.

In addition, the students and their parents raised $1,000 to help the school provide other much-needed items – benches and desks, which must be constructed at the school by using hand tools, as there is no electricity to power tools. Once completed, they will be placed and secured in the school building.

“Learning about the Mapampi School has made me appreciate what we have at our school,” said Eagle Crest fifth grader Gigi Notario. “They sit on dirt floors that have bugs. There are no windows or doors; they just have holes in the wall. And the roof is made of straw.”

“Our school would be a mansion to them,” added fifth grader Elizabeth Elton.

“I think this has made the students realize that not everyone lives the way they do,” said fifth grade teacher Amy Dumler.

Eagle Crest’s project to adopt the sister school in Africa is spearheaded by Dumler, who learned of  a similar project at Niwot Elementary. Niwot Elementary has been a sister school with Mwebaza School in Kyengera, Uganda since 2008, and has helped that school raise funds to build a new three-room classroom building.

Both schools funnel the funds raised through the Mwebaza Foundation established by Niwot Elementary teacher Dale Peterson of Longmont.

“It just makes the logistics so much easier to have a charitable foundation in place to handle the money,” Dumler said.

Mapampi School is a kindergarten through sixth grade school run by the House of Faith Orphanage in Kalomo. Once students reach the end of sixth grade, they must pass exams and pay a substantial sum of money to attend a different community school.

“A lot of the kids don’t go to school after sixth grade,” Elizabeth said. “They don’t have the money to go.”

Eagle Crest students have held coin drives and bake sales to raise money for their sister school, and also collected school supplies to send. But their most successful fundraiser was operating a coffee café at a used book sale at Niwot Elementary in the fall.

“Parents drink a lot of coffee,” Elizabeth said.

Along with school supplies and funds, the students included pen-pal letters and photos of Eagle Crest Elementary and its students.

“We want our students to connect with those students so that they can form friendships,” Dumler said.

“In our letters, we described what Colorado is like and told them about our school,” Gigi Notario said. “We told them about our classroom, the cafeteria and our playground.”

“We also told them what our day in school is like,” Elton said. “Each class sent letters and talked about different things.”

Eagle Crest students collected enough school supplies and funds to ship six more boxes of supplies to Mapampi School on Dec. 20. Those boxes arrived at Mapampi on Feb.2, Dumler said.

Mapampi School headmistress Jo Anne Byrum travelled into town to an internet café to send an e-mail thanking the Eagle Crest students for their donation. The Mapampi school held an assembly to open the boxes.

In her e-mail Byrum wrote, “The teachers opened the first three boxes on Friday and the children watched. Allen explained the packets of letters and showed them the supplies. I like the writing paper, they can use it to write y’all back. I was curious about the books so I peeked at them. I noticed on the back that they are in levels and weeks. I am happy that there is more then one of each book.”

“When the desks arrive I want to show the teachers how to put the children in groups and have them read together from the books. I know this is really going to help them with their English,” she wrote.

Byrum also had suggestions for additional supplies.

“The children need flash cards. My friend … had given me a set with real pictures, not cartoon pictures. It is hard to know what a pizza is if you have never seen one. If you would like to send some fatty pencils and crayons. Also art supplies, color paper, paints, so on,” she wrote.

“We are working on getting those supplies and raising money to send them,”  Dumler said. “The shipping costs $54 a box, so we need to raise a lot of money. But we have lots of ideas and enthusiasm.”
Email: kcglasscock@comcast.net