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TAMPA – A penny here, a penny there.
How often do you run into the convenience store, grab an item and tell the cashier, “Keep the change,” because it’s just a penny or two?
I’ve actually thrown out pennies stuck together with gum and hair at the bottom of my purse. Pick up a penny on the sidewalk? Too much trouble.
This little story about a group of Good Hearts may just get you – and me – rethinking the value of a penny.
Sixth-graders at St. Mary’s Episcopal Day School, under the direction of teachers Linda Boza and Andrea Cardenas, spent a month collecting change and raising money for a project that links them to a small village in southeastern Uganda. They called it Pennies for Papoli, the recipient community.
They raided their piggy banks, worked backyard carnivals and car washes, did extra chores around the house and dug out change in the cupholders of their parents’ cars. One boy donated the $20 his grandfather had given him for Christmas.
In all, 45 kids brought in $1,200 – which comes to 120,000 pennies. When put in that perspective, the little copper coin seems to have a lot more clout.
One hundred percent of the money will be sent to Village Partners International. The nonprofit organization, led by Tampa physician Sylvia Campbell, sets up partnerships between a United States entity – such as a church or community group – and an overseas village in need of help with health, education, housing and business.
It’s not meant to be a charity organization. The goal is to build relationships and develop projects that will ultimately lead to independence and self-sufficiency for those villages. Work is already under way in Uganda and Haiti, two parts of the world that make our problems in the United States seem much less dire.
The sixth-graders’ donation will be directed to a pediatric care center, sorely needed in Papoli. Already, the village has a primary school and preschool thanks mostly to the efforts of supporters at Palma Ceia Presbyterian Church.
“I’m proud of these kids, but not terribly surprised,” says Boza. “They like to go and do. This gives them a purpose. If you point a child in the right direction, you can get amazing results.”
But the story doesn’t end here. The students want to share their success with other youngsters and encourage them to take on “Pennies” projects of their own.
Last week, they helped create a video that tells the story of Pennies for Papoli. Each student delivered a line, detailing the experience from start to finish. They provided information about the region and offered advice on organizing such an effort. Carol Stefany, the school’s technology director, did the filming.
By the end of the school year, that video will be posted on http://village partnersinternational.org. The kids hope other students will be inspired by what they’ve accomplished.
More than 2,500 children live in Papoli and surrounding villages, and more than half are orphans. Most have lost their parents to the AIDS epidemic that has devastated the region. A pediatric care center will make a big difference in these children’s lives.
Campbell gets emotional when she talks about what the St. Mary’s sixth-graders accomplished.
“Children are the future of our world,” she says. “And when they begin to understand that we do not stand alone, that we are all part of a family that is interconnected, then there is hope for peace, understanding and healing in this world.”
Listen to 12-year-old Maddie James and you, too, will find reason to hope.
Maddie’s younger brother and his friend wanted to help with her class project. So they proposed a backyard carnival to raise pennies, and she enthusiastically joined in. They sold snow cones, had a penny toss and a race-car rally. In all, the resourceful kids raised $85.
Maddie had a personal stake in this. Her parents, Molly and Hunt James, had taken the family to Africa, and Maddie remembered how the children there waved and beamed whenever she waved at them.
“I never knew a wave could make a person so happy,” she says. “It did make me a little sad, though, because I know how lucky I am and I just wish other kids could be that lucky.”
Maddie hopes to visit Africa again one day, but next time, she wants to go on a mission trip to offer support. For now, she’s happy with sending her contribution to the fund to build the pediatric care center.
Not all school lessons are taught from a textbook. This one required some creative thinking and action. Bravo to these sixth-graders, and let’s hope other Bay area classes get inspired by the video.
“The main thing I would say to people is that you can indeed make a difference. Every single person can make a difference,” says Boza. “The pennies that one child here gathered might provide a shot to a child over there that will prevent a disease.”
Add up pennies, add up small actions – and see how good will multiplies.
DO YOU KNOW A GOOD HEART?
Do you have a nomination for Good Hearts? We want to hear from you. If you know of a person or group doing something worthwhile in this community – and making a difference quietly and under the radar – please contact us so we can shine the light. E-mail your suggestion to mbearden@tampatrib .com (with Good Hearts in the subject line) or write to: Michelle Bearden, Tampa Tribune, 200 S. Parker St., Tampa, FL 33606.
Watch the “Pennies for Papoli” video in production on Michelle Bearden’s “Keeping the Faith” at 9 a.m. Sunday on WFLA-TV. She can be reached at (813) 259-7613.
By Emmanual Ofumbi
ofumbiz@gmail.com
“Let them give thanks to the LORD for his unfailing love and his wonderful deeds for men, for he satisfies the thirsty and fills the hungry with good things.” Psalm 107:8, 9
As the Children are Our Future……..…we are their Present and Future
At Papoli Community Development Foundation-PACODEF, we understand the joy of giving generously. Through the generosity of friends like you, we are able to provide gifts that fulfill the most basic of human needs. Where hunger reigns in a small village of Papoli in Uganda-Africa, where children go to school without breakfast, having gone to bed on half stomach. We provide porridge to preschool and primary school kids, white corn mixed with soya beans is ground to flour.
Benefits realized from the porridge for Papoli project:
O Providing a meal at school is a simple but concrete way to give poor children a chance to learn and thrive, school feeding helps keep children in school, they report to school in time, there is minimal absenteeism; teachers have noticed a dramatic improvement in student performance.
O The daily meals given at the school motivate parents to enroll their children, there has been great rise in numbers of kids in lower primary as children who were just staying at home in villages or going to hunt or scare monkeys, baboons and birds in plantain and grain fields have come to school. The lower classes instead of the optimum class number of 60 students have gone out of the way and enrolled 130-160- students since the porridge feeding started.
O The benefits are also felt by poor households that are now relieved of having to scratch for food. When kids get home, they no longer press their mothers for food, it is also reported that some children often take part of their porridge to share with siblings back at home or even sick parents who are bed ridden.
O The mothers who are customarily the bread winners and providers for households now don’t have to worry about leaving their field work and rushing back home to scratch around for lunch for the kids. They have more time for their own work and less worries about finding money and food for their breakfast and lunch.
O In addition to boosting student nutrition and providing peasant farmers with a local market, the initiative is improving the economic welfare of local community members. Some have jobs processing and cooking food for the students.
O The students bring fire wood in class turns, wash utensils and assist the cooks in serving porridge.
FACTS:
Over 40,000 children die every day from:
• Malnutrition
• Starvation
• Hunger-related diseases
“More than 840 million people in the world are malnourished – 799 million of them are from the developing world. More than 153 million of them are under the age of five. 6 million children under the age of 5 die every year as a result of hunger.” from the Bread for the World Institute website
“As simple as it sounds, food is essential in the global fight against HIV and AIDS. Nutritious food can prolong the lives of people suffering with HIV and AIDS. Food and good nutrition can also allow them to continue to earn income and feed their families.” from the United Nations World Food Program website
Porridge in Papoli Project:
For $33 a day 1200 children in the schools of this small community can be fed. For $660 a month all of these children can be fed.
Whatever gift you choose to give, we thank you for generously loving the children we serve.
Village Council members:
1. Emmanuel Ofumbi.
2. Difas Yoga.
3. Charles Obbo Opendi.
4. Engineer Geoffrey Okoth
From Emmanual Ofumbi
–posted by pulse on Feb 15, 2009
There is a story that I want to share with you. It may not change your life, nor may it move you to tears. But there is a chance that it may touch that space in you from where the fountain of life springs from, in all of us. The place from where it all began. Where the entire history of mankind, of the universe, we can all feel inside of us – in the content of our souls.
This was a few years back when I had left for the United States from India to study at a prominent college and then pursue a career. At a professional level one could say that I was well accomplished as a young woman in a foreign country. There were many physical comforts and privileges that money could buy.
But somewhere, there was a strange kind of emptiness engulfing me all the time. There was a pain inside but no emotion to name it. This void did not seem to be caused by external circumstances. It seemed to emerge from somewhere within me. Everything appeared very limited and measurable. We strive for degrees, jobs, relationships, money, name and fame and then one day we die. Whole of existence dissolving into the silence of nothingness. Cycles of pain – pleasure – pain follow us like seasons of nature. This it seems is life. An ever-changing insecurity; an uncertainty where every moment is a transition point only for another to take its place. What is the meaning of being alive?
As time passed, these questions became so irrepressible that the only place left for me to go was within! So I put in my resignation at work, stayed home and spent many days alone in silence.
Somewhere my faith in life had still not left me. There was a part of me that believed that “Life is fair.” That was the foundation of my journey from the known to the nameless. I thought that if life is really fair than we are not supposed to go through even a trace of suffering. We should be equipped with all that we need to live a life that is absolutely happy and peaceful.
In the period that followed, the inquiry got only more intense. There was an unknown force fueling my search. I was traveling to places within myself that were never visited before. I felt like for the first time in my life I was looking at the naked beauty of my soul.
In this time, silence helped. There is something deeply sacred about silence. I felt that when I was truly alone, I was one with all. Obviously, this pilgrimage within oneself is endless. But I started feeling more awake than ever before. And a day came, when it felt like my heart broke open.
Something totally illogical came over me. Most things I had done in my life were all measurable and calculated. Almost everything was only to benefit myself. But now I had to do the exact opposite and see what happened. I wanted to be illogical and unreasonable. And the most illogical thing I could do was give without getting anything in return. That which could never be calculated.
It was like setting free irrational acts of kindness and senseless acts of beauty into this world. It was like writing poetry in the prose of life. It was like allowing the inner universe to dance.
My world started changing dramatically. I started sharing the skills that I earlier charged thousands of dollars for, completely free. I started volunteering for long hours with different non-profits. In the year that followed my experiments took me to places I could have never imagined. I cleaned public bathrooms and collected trash with the women who did rag-picking for a living. I ate food with the homeless, spent time with the terminally ill, painted with the mentally challenged, danced with the young and the old; and shared insights with complete strangers.
Now, Love was no more a temporary sense of pleasure or comfort. Love is emptying your entire being – and offering the whole of yourself. It is breaking open every barrier in the heart so that generosity could flow. It happens when the entire breadth and depth and beauty of your life releases into one passionate communion.
Suddenly I started seeing the homeless woman on the street in India as my own sister. It felt that in some strange way my own happiness was tied to her wellbeing. It felt that by serving her I was facing my own fears, aversions and in some inexplicable way healing a part of my own soul. I realized that the only way for me to make myself complete was to share with others unconditionally. By working together – a paradox blossoms. Service becomes an opportunity for us to become whole again; to grow in love. Service becomes Gratitude!
I see today that it is really about the spaces in-between. A flower blossoms somewhere outside but my heart seems to release the fragrance inside. It is no more about you and I… but the spaces ‘in-between us.’ The energy that brings us together in that moment. Today service for me is not something that is limited to a certain section of society. Working in the slums of India or even listening to someone with complete attention can be an act of love. Just like the chair we sit on or the air we breathe is serving us. What service teaches me is that every single moment is filled with divine compassion and goodness and the more I am alive to it, the more I am affecting the world around me in a positive way.
There is something in me that softly whispers today: ‘Just let go.’
I send away my soul into the invisible. It flows into a directionless expansion. The scattered instant becomes whole again.
There is stillness inside. I am living, and dying and loving, all in one sublime moment.
Village Partners International
is an international example of how personal compassion, local initiative, and individual abilities can successfully engage to make the world a better community.
Mission Statement
Village Partners International seeks to develop and enhance communities with profound need.
Through partnership we seek to strengthen their medical, educational, and material resources.
In partnership we respect their histories, acknowledge their abilities, and honor their dignity.
By partnering our gifts are strengthened by their gifts.
We are seeking to help make the world a stronger community by sharing God’s love one village at a time.
http://www.goodtube.org/video.php?organization=262&l=Village+Partners+International
Did you know that the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere is only a few hundred miles off of the Florida coast? We travel to Haiti with a group of American Doctors, Surgeons and Nurses with Village Partners International, who have dedicated one week of their time to bring essential life saving surgeries to those who never would have received this care. And you won?t believe the conditions in which these surgeries are performed. You won?t want to miss this emotional story.
David
sylcamp
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