Zambian woman thanks students for their help

Published 10:29 pm Thursday, December 9, 2010

MILL CREEK

Last year, a group of Heatherwood Middle School students clothed and fed 500 Everett residents as part of a service project.

This school year, students opted for a project a little farther away: they’re raising $18,000 through May to build a well in the South African country of Zambia, where clean water is scarce.

“This year, we’re going to give them a better life,” said Keilyn Kramer, a seventh-grader and one of 50 students involved with the service club Hawks Open to New Opportunities and Responsibilities, or HONOR.

Wednesday, Dec. 2, in a kickoff event for their project, about 900 students packed the school’s gym to listen to Princess Kasune Zulu tell students how she struggled as a child to adjust to a new life in a small Zambian village without clean drinking water.

Zulu, 32, is an activist and educator who grew up as an urban child orphaned after her parents died from AIDS. As a young woman, she was diagnosed with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.

Today, she travels the world speaking about AIDS and public health issues on behalf of World Vision, the Federal Way-based Christian relief organization.

Zambian girls, she told students, walk many miles to fetch water every morning before heading off to school.

They walk so far because clean water is scarce, especially in the smaller villages that dot the countryside.

“You can imagine many children in your age group — many of them younger than you are — who walk 10 miles a day,” she said.

By the time they get to school, they’re often too tired to absorb what they learn, which hinders their education, she said.

Many children, she said, die from diseases because of contaminated drinking water.

She applauded the students’ “Water for Life” project.

“What you are doing is what is called an entry point of basic health care,” she said. “You are empowering a community.”

Sharon Fabrizio, who teaches seventh- and eighth-grade math, helped start the service club in 2008. For their first project, students adopted troops serving in Iraq and sent them letters and gifts.

She said the club decided this year to build a well in Africa. Fabrizio contacted World Vision, which told her that Zulu would be addressing students at Seattle Pacific University.

Club members plan to write letters to Mill Creek businesses, asking for tax-deductible donations to the project.

Zulu said she has spoken to students across the United States on behalf of World Vision and was impressed with the Heatherwood project.

“When children learn what is happening, they want to respond,” she said.

Oscar Halpert writes for the Herald of Everett.