An Opportunity to Serve

This project has been a blessing to me and my students. One of the core values that we are trying to teach our students is service. We want to teach them to serve others, and to see not only how their service blesses the lives of those that they are serving, but also how that service blesses their own lives. This project is helping my students to look beyond their own circumstances. They are learning that even if they can only afford to donate $.10, a lot of their $.10 together turns out to be quite a few Kenya Schillings. They are learning what true teamwork is.

I have a student who I will call Travis. Travis is very intelligent, and I have the privilege of having him in my class. Travis is one of my students that has really grasped what we are trying to do with this project. We had an activity called a pie in the face activity. The students were to vote for their "favorite" teacher by donating money. The top contributors would get to throw a pie in their teacher's in the face. I know this probably sounds a little strange, but this is actually a very popular activity here in this area.

We started the collections for the activity on a Monday. That Monday, Travis came to me and donated $11. I was a little surprised by the amount, but I gladly took it and thanked him for his donation. The next day on Tuesday, Travis came back to me to make another donation. He told me that he wanted to donate $10.87. Knowing what he had donated yesterday, I was surprised. Being his teacher, I asked him the following question: "Do your parents know that you are donating this much money?" He looked at me and he held up a $5.00 bill. He told me that the $5.00 bill was from his mother. He then told me that he asked his mother if he could donate the entire contents of his piggy bank, and she said: "Yes." I then looked at a little container that he pulled out of his book bag, and it was filled to the top with coins that he had been saving. He unscrewed the top of the container. I opened up my envelope that I was putting contributions in, and he slowly poured the entire contents of his piggy bank into my envelope. He looked under the cap of the container and he found a few coins that were lodged there, and he knocked them free, and they fell into the envelope too.

This sacrifice brought tears to my eyes. He gave everything that he had to help the students there. Not only did he tell me how much money he was giving me, he also told me exactly how much it was in Kenya Shillings. Consequently, every donation that he made, he told me how much it was in Kenya Schillings. He goes on line every day, and he checks the exchange rate, and he tells the other students how much the value of the Shilling fluctuates from day to day. Travis ended up donating over $23 by the time the activity ended. He was the top student contributor for that activity. He hasn't stopped there. He noticed that as he walked outside in the community and around our campus, people would drop change on the ground, so he started picking up the change. At the end of every school day, he comes in and gives me a handful of change. He is awesome, and I have learned a lot from him.

This story of Travis is only one of a number of special student experiences that I have encountered during this project so far. I am very proud of my students, and I know this experience will be invaluable to them.