Fill up your water bottle and get ready for an awesome way to help provide kids in Africa with clean water. For the next couple of weeks, I challenge you to drink only water. No juice, no soda, no sports drinks, no (gasp!) coffee, no Jamba Juice—nothing but water for two weeks.
Not sure what you’ll be doing with your extra time this spring and summer? Would you like to make time to help out hungry kids? Whatever your current plans are right now, the Great American Bake Sale is a fun event you don’t want to miss. Right now people all over America are teaming up to battle childhood hunger—by baking. Simply bake, sell your delectable creations, and send your funds to Share Our Strength, who will pass it on to charities whose purpose is to feed hungry children.
Sadly, in a country with such abundant wealth, one sixth of children are at risk of hunger, according to the Great American Bake Sale web site. Their web site points out that if you were to visit a soup kitchen, one in every four people standing in line would be a kid. Childhood hunger in America is a reality, and as teenagers, it is our duty to help our fellow youth.
A few months ago I had the opportunity to chat with Kendall Ciesemier, the 15-year-old founder of the Kids Caring 4 Kids organization, which provides impoverished African children with food and education. This past September, she appeared on “The Oprah Winfrey Show” with former President Bill Clinton, who came to her high school and spoke at a surprise assembly.
Kendall felt moved to fight for justice in fifth grade, when she watched an Africa special on “The Oprah Winfrey Show” about orphans. One girl her age had lost her family to AIDS, and now she carried the responsibility of raising her younger sibling. Compelled by the orphan’s pain and grief, Kendall signed up to sponsor a child through World Vision that day. Later she expanded her sponsorship to include an entire Zambian village. Her charity eventually grew into a nonprofit organization, Kids Caring 4 Kids.
“It’s gotten so much easier for people to join the force to fight AIDS,” Kendall said at a coffee shop in January 2008.
You may have heard about the recent violence in Kenya, including a church burning in Eldoret, and 350,000 people displaced (according to Newsweek). Here are five ways you can help the Kenyan people during this time of crisis.
1. World Vision: Donate to emergency aid disaster response. World Vision is an excellent humanitarian and child sponsorship organization.
2. Kenya Children’s Fund: Donate or sponsor a child. Kenya Children’s Fund is an excellent child sponsorship organization located in Kinyago-Dandora in Nairobi, Kenya--one of the regions affected by the recent violence.
I sponsor 18-year-old Faizo through this organization. I’d like to share some quotes from his letters with you. He wants to be a doctor, which he considers "a marvelous career." His role models are his teachers, who "are sharpening my mind to be full of knowledge, so that one day I could help my society in rebuilding it." He also writes, "I don’t know how I can express my gratitude to you but I’m really happy and glad."
When my violin teacher went to Kenya with Kenya Children’s Fund, she introduced music to their schools and ran a photojournal project.
Today is not a good day to be picking up food from a food pantry, or receiving a meal from a soup kitchen. Due to the increasing cost of food, more and more people who need assistance, and less government donations, food pantries and soup kitchens across the United States are facing a crisis.
“This is as bare as I have ever seen the shelves,” said Melissa Travis in a press release on the People's Resource Center web site.
Two decades of violence have drenched Uganda in blood. The Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) have captured children, forced them to become soldiers, and brainwashed them with terrible lies. They define training as killing another child, murdering those who refuse to comply. They rub shea nut oil on the children’s skin, and say the bullets will bounce off.
