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Viewing 19 - 27 out of 186 Blogs.
Five local middle school students to travel to Cambodian orphanage
AVON, Colorado — Twelve-year-old Jack Skidmore believes he and four of his classmates will be doing their part to make the world a better place for at least 75 orphans this spring. The students are heading to Cambodia with Stone Creek Charter School teacher Jen Gutmann and Lisa-Marie Howell, a local woman whose new nonprofit, the Children's Global Alliance, is making the trip possible. Howell started the Children's Global Alliance last year in an effort to empower local children by “allowing them to make a hands-on difference in the lives of children in the world's most impoverished countries,” Howell wrote in her blog. Howell returned from a trip to Cambodia last summer and knew her work there wasn't finished. She worked with an organization called Global Crossroads and saw many orphanages in the Phnom Penh area in need of resources and extra care. She chose the Cambodia Hope Association Orphanage as the one she'd return to this year. Through some fundraising and a lot of hard work, Howell expects to help change some of the lives of the 75 children at the orphanage, as well as the lives of the five Stone Creek Charter School students who are coming along. “I am not satisfied with just being a bystander in life, and never will be,” Howell wrote in her blog's “about me” section. And neither are the students who made the cut to go on the trip. Jack Skidmore, 12, Kassie Heiner, 12, Anna Trombetta, 13, Tabor Whitney, 13, and Nina Ferzacca, 13, are students who are emotionally mature enough for the culture shock they will surely experience in Cambodia. Gutmann and Howell didn't choose the students at random, nor did they accept every student who showed interest in going on the trip. “The students had to submit an essay to be considered,” Howell said. Gutmann and Howell ended up interviewing about 15 students. They wanted to be very careful in choosing the right kids for the trip — kids who could handle the experience and enrich the lives of the orphans by teaching them English and other important skills. After the interviews, Gutmann and Howell decided to write down the names of the students they thought should go on the trip. They ended up writing down the same five names. “These five students stood out,” Gutmann said.
While some of these five middle school students have traveled to places like Australia, South Korea and Hawaii, they are all trying to prepare themselves for a world they're sure they've never seen before. |