DATE: Apr. 24 , 2008
Martino students raise money for children in Africa:
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Thirteen-year-old Grant Vinkavich and Jeremy Williams have been asked to raise money for projects in the past.
This time, they didn’t have to be asked.
“No one should be living like that,” said Grant, a seventh-grader at Martino Junior High School who began raising money for a not-for-profit organization called Invisible Children after learning about children in Uganda who are kidnapped from their homes and forced to fight for a cause they don’t understand.
Some of them are just 5-years-old, said Jeremy, and trained to kill their friends and family.
Their stories are told in a documentary that launched the Invisible Children campaign.
“They’re powerful movies,” said Martino social studies Brian Laack, who – along with Martino social studies teacher Brandon Kilstrom --incorporated the educational video into their seventh-grade unit on Africa and its cultures.
The unit includes a six-week discussion about the hardships facing the people of Africa, including slavery, imperialism, poverty, diseases, wars and racism. They tackle the topics through videos and PowerPoint presentations as well as reading a fictional book, Year of No Rain by Alice Mead.
The video, which was incorporated into the lesson, was shot by three college-age students who went to Africa in 2003 to film a documentary about the conflict in Sudan. They stumbled upon the disturbing story of children living in fear because rebel soldiers would invade their villages and abduct young boys who would be forced to fight in the war.
To avoid capture, the boys would hide during the day and walk into the city each night to find refuge and a place to sleep.
In the morning, they would bundle up their belongings and return to their villages. They became known as the “invisible children.”
Their story affected Martino students deeply, who started selling bracelets and T-shirts to raise money for the Invisible Children campaign. The money will be used to provide safety, food, education, clothes and healthcare for the children of Uganda, said Kilstrom.
So far, the seventh-graders have raised more than $11,000 for the not-for-profit organization.
“Watching those videos had an impact on them,” said Laack.
“They’re taking it to heart,” agreed Kilstrom, who had students coming up to him asking when the bracelets would be coming in and whether they could still buy one.
“They’re so engaged,” said Laack. “They want to learn more (about the children of Uganda).... They want to help.”
Even Laack, who watched the video for the first time last year, was so touched by the children’s stories that he offered his students an extra incentive to help the “invisible children” of Uganda. He told them he would shave his head if they raised $5,000 for the group.
They ended up raising $7,000; Kilstrom’s seventh-grade classes raised another $4,000.
“I had always heard Africa had a lot of problems,” said Laack, who’s still getting used to his buzz cut. “But I never saw the extent of what’s going on.... It impacted me, that’s for sure.”
Thirteen-year-old Anna Yonkaitis was stunned to see images of 5-, 6-, 7-year-old children drawing pictures of people killing one another.
“They were pretty gory,” she said.
Twelve-year-old Hannah Gorecki said she’ll never forget seeing video of young boys sleeping under a hospital at night so they could avoid being kidnapped.
“We worry about problems like friendship,” said Grant, “and they worry about how they’re going to survive.”