The intermediate classes of five public schools have fundraised enough money to build a school in the Masai Mara region of Kenya.
The fundraising and construction will be done through the organization Free The Children.
Trillium Lakelands District School Board students were introduced to the organization by Tischa Hetherington, a teacher at Central Senior School. She taught Jason Apostolopoulos, now an 18-year-old outreach worker for Free The Children, when he was an eighth grader in York Region.
Ms. Hetherington applied to the board for program enhancement funds to launch a fundraiser to support Free The Children. Five schools —Central Senior, Dr. George Hall, Mariposa, Scott Young and Jack Callaghan— participated in fundraising that began after the March Break.
Jason Apostolopoulos of Free The Children, centre, accepts a $6,000 cheque from Tischa Hetherington and Amanda Ellis. Grade 7 and 8 students from five public schools raised the money to build a school in Kenya.
In two sessions, Mr. Apostolopoulos spoke to the students about the importance of believing that one young person can make a difference.
"We can't change the world by sitting on our butts," he told a group of students. He told them about the founding of Free The Children by Craig Kielburger 11 years ago. Then 12, Craig read about the murder of 12-year-old Iqbal Masih. Iqbal had been chained to a loom and forced to tie knots in carpets for 12 hours a day, six days a week. He had been working from the ages of four to 10 before he escaped. He spent two years talking about child labour before he was silenced.
When Craig asked his class who would help him, a few girls and a few boys that liked those girls put up their hands. From that grew Free The Children, which has built 400 schools, sent $10 million in medical supplies and 200,000 health kits to the Third World. The organization is youth operated.
Mr. Apostolopoulos told the group there were 250 million child labourers in the world. Iqbal Masih helped "open people's eyes to an issue people thought was in the past," he said.
Of the three billion people living on the planet, half live in poverty, living on about $2 a day. Because of this, children are forced to work or to walk half a day to get clean water and don't go to school.
"Education can solve a lot of these problems," Mr. Apostolopoulos told the group. He added that choices we as consumers make can affect lives halfway around the world. He mentioned rapper Kanye West's song, Diamonds Are Forever. The remixed version is about how the illegal diamond trade in Sierra Leone fuels civil war. "These problems, we're all really connected to in a really negative way," he said of consumerism.
Mr. Apostolopoulos said it would cost $6 billion to educate every child in the world. He admitted that was a huge sum. But Canadian and American consumers spend $8 billion a year on makeup. He called the situation a "lack of priorities" and asked "why should we live in privilege" when others' standards are so low? Of the school in Kenya, Mr. Apostolopoulos said, "that's a really incredible thing." Children who are educated will be able to get a good job, he told the students.
He talked to them about a trip he took to Kenya when he was 12. He was amazed to find out that residents drank Coca-Cola because it was 50 cents a bottle, but water was $3. When the cola vendor saw the visitors, he turned on water for the guests to freshen up. Mr. Apostolopoulos said the children were "joyous" when they saw water to play with. That village could have had a well dug for only $200. "You don't have to be a Gandhi to make a difference," he said.
Before the presentation, Mr. Apostolopoulos said many boards fundraise to build schools, but doing it in such a short period of time was "a really special thing."
Local students did some "really cool" fundraising like throwing pies at teachers and taping a teacher to a flagpole. He said it was great to see the rest of the school support the Grade 7 and 8 students in their endeavours.
The school should be built within the year, said Mr. Apostolopoulos.
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