Remember your eight-year old birthday – what memories does it trigger? Birthday cake and candles, a circle of friends, a Battleship game or Lip Smackers, pin-the-tail on the donkey?
Harper Jordan and her mom, Laura, imagined something quite different – raising money for students in Uganda.
Instead of gifts, this year Harper asked the girls in her second grade class at St. Andrew School to help her celebrate her eighth birthday by contributing to One Heart Uganda. They raised $770 – that’s quite a goody bag!
When posed with the question of how best to use these funds, Fr. Matthias and his administrative staff at St. Venasio elementary school, determined the gift should be put toward providing lunch for every student, all 220 of them.
Currently, only some of the students’ parents can afford to pay for lunch on top of their school fees. For many kids this means they don’t eat until they return home from school for dinner. With this donation, lunch will be served to all students for roughly three months, or a trimester of the school year.
What’s on the menu? A typical school lunch starts with corn meal flour from which a warm porridge is created. Do the math: 220 students + 3 months daily = 13,200 lunches = WOW!
Something as simple as one birthday party + one child’s idea + supportive classmates = a remarkable impact on two schools.
