Cardboard Village #2

Saturday night we braved the wind and held our second annual "Cardboard Village" event.  We had about 45 kids out on the football field for the night.  The idea is to simulate what it would be like to live without proper shelter for the night....but we let the kids use the restrooms :)  Each student raised a minimum of 50 dollars to sleep out in a cardboard box.  Molly Barnard, founder of our school chapter and President of the Amnesty International Chapter at GVSU came and spoke to the students about being involved in Amnesty in college and making a difference in the world from here.  She was really good.  We carried water around the track and simulated those being infected with dirty water.  It was a fun night and our co-presidents did a great job organizing the event.  I am SO proud of them. 

Best of all....we raised enough money to build our school AND start our well! 

Donate!!

http://mycharitywater.org/mshsamnestyclubproject

Donate!!!  Help us make a HUGE impact in northern Ethiopia.  We are raising money to help build more wells...giving more people access to clean water.  Our goal is 5,000.  We are kicking off our fundraising with an event called "Cardboard Village" next Saturday, Oct. 15.  We have 60 kids signed up....more on it soon :)

Please consider donating and giving someone the gift of water.  Every penny helps...every dollar helps...please...help us, help them :) 

Mona Shores Amnesty

This year we have decided to join forces with our school Kiva Club.  Many of the Amnesty members are also Kiva Club members.  Chris Johnson (advisor of Kiva) and I decided that if we joined forces we could be more effective.  Overall, both clubs were formed to help others and spread awareness of global issues such as poverty.  Together we can make a bigger worldwide impact.  Power in numbers, right? :)

Kristof

Nicholas Kristof, NYT columnist and author of "Half the Sky" spoke at GRCC last evening!!   
Here are some disturbing quotes and/or statistics that inspirted the building of our school in Cambodia (which is almost finished!)

*The major world problem in the 18th C. was slavery, in the 19th C. it was totalitarianim and in the 20th C. it is gender inequality. 

*the major issues facing women are traffiking and reproductive rights

*In Niger a woman has an average of 7 children.

*40% of male foreigners that enter Thailand are there to participate in the established prostitution rings.

Jason Collela stood up and was selected by Kristof to ask a question during the Q and A portion of his presentation. His question was "Do you think the world poverty problem can be solved by concentrating on one country at a time or should we focus on poverty in general?"  He responded that since it is a global issue, it needs to be focused on globally.  In addition, Jason told him how he had inspired us to build a school in Cambodia and some of our students had read his most recent work "Half the Sky."  He was applauded not only by Kristof but the entire audience. 

As a side note, tonight we are holding our first combined meeting for Amnesty and Kiva.  Looking forward to a packed house!! :)  Come one, come all!!!

Spreading Awareness

On Tuesday the Co-presidents and I went to Campbell school to start our chapter of Amnesty there with the fifth grade classes.  The girls did a great job introducing our cause.  They talked about Sub-Saharan Africa, what it is like to live there (very generally) and the need, access and lack of water available.  Our goal on Tuesday was just to inform the kids that not everyone has running water in there homes to cook with, drink, clean themselves with, etc.  The kids asked a lot of great questions and were eager to go home and tell the adults in their lives about what they learned in school that day.  It was a great way to kick off our year :)

Charity: Water --- 2011-2012

Almost a billion people on the planet don’t have access to clean drinking water. Unsafe water and lack of basic sanitation kill more people every year than all forms of violence, including war. We're working to change that.  This year our Amnesty Club is working with Charity: Water to help cure the "water problem."  We picked this particular organization to work with as 100% of public donations go directly to water projects. All operating costs are covered by a group of private donors so every dollar we raise can go to people in need.  Here is the promo video we are using this year to spread awareness of our cause.

http://youtu.be/B5QtcoBGLnM

Cardboard Village

On October 30th, we hosted an event titled "Cardboard Village."  This was our first major fundraiser on our crusade to build a school in rural Cambodia.  It is our hope that by spreading education in the area, we can change the course of the lives of generations to come.  Although the school will host girls and boys, it is primarily targeted at girls who wouldn't be able to go to school otherwise, for a multitude of reasons: Not enough money, fear they would be kidnapped, they are needed to work at home, etc. However, a school in a rural area is good for everyone. Education can bring prosperity to an area, create jobs, and even delay the age of marriage and childbirth.  Simply put, we are attempting to alleviate some of the major contributors to poverty.

Co-presidents Maggie Barnard and Kaitlyn Rabach, came up with the idea of Cardboard Village.  The event consisted of students spending the night on the football field in cardboard boxes...in 30 degree weather.  In order to participate in the event, students were expected to raise a minimum of 50 dollars.  The majority of the students surpassed that goal.  The event brought in almost 5,000 dollars, all of which is going to the construction of the school. 

Some of evenings activities were decorating their boxes, a relay race where students carried cement blocks to symbolize the physical labor women do daily in the developing world, and a piggyback and three-legged race, to symbolize the dependence that women have on men.  In addition to those events, the current Miss Michigan Katie LaRoche spoke to the students on the topic of human trafficking. She gave the students some startling facts and encouraged them to get involved and change the world. Here is her facebook post about the event:

Spoke at Mona Shores HS last night to 50 kids who were spending the night in Cardboard boxes in the freezing cold weather in effort to raise the money to build a school in rural Cambodia. That is some selfless and inspiring hard work right there :0)

The event was covered by the Chronicle and can be found here:
http://www.mlive.com/news/muskegon/index.ssf/2010/11/mona_shores_high_schools_amnes.html