Helping a village: Jump-a-thons, bake sales raise thousands
March 10, 2007
You might think that 10-year-old Haley North and her business partner, Kit Toenniges, also 10, have been washing windows, pulling weeds and scrubbing cars for a little extra spending money.
But these two, and their 1,600 classmates at Cranbrook Schools, have a grander scheme -- eradicating poverty and illiteracy in a tiny African village.
On Friday, three Cranbrook teachers and a local attorney with ties to Africa, left for an 11-day trip to Namtenga, a village of about 4,000 in Burkina Faso, one of the poorest regions in the world. They are delivering school and medical supplies purchased by the students.
And the villagers will see, for the first time, a $16,000 weaving studio, complete with new looms -- all paid for by the children of Cranbrook -- where the women of Namtenga will launch a textile industry.
The studio is just the latest in a series of projects Cranbrook students have paid for in the last six years, including a new well and pump, a new playground, scholarships and a village cow.
"They are probably really happy that people from a different country care about them and would do this for them," said Megan Martzolff, 9, a fourth grader, who, along with her pigtailed companion, Sophie Sklar, 10, sold lemonade last summer for the project.
The Namtenga project began in 2000, with attorney Michael Lavoie, a partner at Butzel Long, who had daughters at Brookside, Cranbrook's elementary school. Lavoie worked in Namtenga digging wells from 1975 to 1977 as a member of the Peace Corps.
Lavoie, who kept in touch with friends he made there, told Cranbrook officials about the village's many needs. From there, it took off.
Jump-a-thons, bake sales, car washes and craft sales helped raise thousands of dollars. In addition to the major projects, the money also was used to buy fun things Namtenga children might never see --kaleidoscopes, soccer balls and art supplies.
The results were almost immediate. Enrollment at the village school climbed to more than 200 from 42, many of them girls, as a result of scholarships paid for by the Cranbrook children's efforts. While the village had mostly relied on surface water found in low-lying marshes, it now pumps clean water from a $6,000 well. Children now play soccer, and Cranbrook students are considering buying soccer nets, said Brookside's school nurse Marcy De Craene.
There will be a personal connection, too. When Lavoie, and teachers Margaret Charney, Peter Charney and Lynn Bennett Carpenter, a weaver, arrive in Namtenga, they will carry 270 letters, written by Cranbrook students, to their peers in the village.
For attorney Lavoie, the Namtenga project is a good way to spread a message he learned 30 years ago, toiling in the heat with villagers he came to call friends.
"We are equally situated in our need to learn from each other," he said. "We share that as people. You learn there is a great sense of equality in the world."
Contact L.L. BRASIER at 248-858-2262 or brasier@freepress.com.
Copyright © 2007 Detroit Free Press Inc.
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