Cheryl Ciaranca, a teacher at Community Middle School, was instrumental in bringing visitors from the Democratic Republic of Congo to the school on March 27. Eight years ago her academic team held a spaghetti dinner and auction resulting in more than $9,000 to supply clean water in Africa. Her students have been raising money and giving since then.
“We had witnessed first hand how inspired and energized kids become when empowered to make a difference in the world,” Ciaranca says. “After the event I watched them shift from a focus on helping people who have nothing back to their world of Facebook, iPods, and cell phones.”
“They needed to truly connect with the kids on the other side of the globe whose lives were changed by their efforts,” says Ciaranca. “This was the beginning of Hands Across the Water and a journey that continues to be one of the most enlightening and educational experiences of my lifetime.”
The motto for Hands Across the Water, an E-mail exchange program started by Ciaranca, is “changing the world one child at a time.” There are 257 students in WW-P schools who are sharing their lives with Congolese students through the program.
“Students who were corresponding with Congolese children really got to learn about the difficulties these kids face on a daily basis,” says Ciaranca. “One seventh grader learned that her friend did not own a book and an eighth grade student learned her Congolese friend would not be in school the following year because it was her sister’s turn to attend.”
“I found myself surrounded by inspired students who had gotten a call to action,” says Ciaranca. “There were no computers in the school so the Congolese participants would have to earn enough money to pay for computer time at the Internet cafe, two miles over the bridge. This worked as long as the bridge was not washed out by the seasonal flooding.”
There is no public education in Congo, and families pay $5 to $10 per month for each student in elementary school. High school tuition is double that of elementary school, making high school only a dream for most children. Most students in the Congo who attend school through grade 8 drop out to supplement their family’s meager income.
Elsie McKee, the president of Woman, Cradle of Abundance at Princeton University; and Monigue Mukuna, president of FEBA in Congo (Femme, Berceau de l’Abondance) visited students at Community Middle School on March 27 to congratulate Hands Across the Water, the international service club at CMS, for its efforts to support orphaned and destitute children in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
The club hosted a question-and-answer session to give students an accurate picture of life for the children they support. They spoke of arranged marriage for girls — sometimes at age 12 or 13 to men 30 and older. They spoke of young girls resorting to prostitution to support siblings or their own children. They told stories about the children FEBA has been able to help in Kinshasa, the capital of the DRC.
For Congolese students a missing roof was normal and not a big problem. The students had no desks, only bundles of sticks to place in their laps to prop up their books. Students and teachers in Congo miss school often due to illness. Disease runs rampant in the Congo where there is no medical care and untreated water.
“As I found myself exploring the logistics, legalities, and staggering cost of shipping supplies into Congo, one of our girls learned that her contact in Congo had just lost her young sister to malaria,” Ciaraca says. “By the end of that school year we raised enough money to ship five cases of donated books, a used laptop, and a case of insecticide.”
The group has sponsored 26 orphaned children for the past six years by paying high school tuition and related school fees. Those who graduate have a responsibility to “pay it forward” with 60 hours of community service.
They are covering the tuition, fees, books, and uniforms for all four years at Pembas Academy. Many of these children share a personal goal of becoming a teacher. “If we are to make the American dream a reality we must develop a world perspective,” says Ciaranca.
The next fundraising event is a spaghetti dinner and auction to benefit Hands Across the Water, Trenton Area Soup Kitchen, Woman Cradle of Abundance, and HomeFront on Friday, May 16.
