East Dallas Times

Charlie Pippen — Courtesy Photo

By Bruce Felps and Charlie Pippen, more the latter

Charlie Pippen, a fifth-grade student at Lakehill Preparatory School, understands the need for global good will and mutual support among cultures. Too bad the rest of the world fails to follow his lead.

He and his family plan a volunteer trip this summer to a part of Africa most of us couldn’t find on a map. There, the Pippen family will help strengthen two schools they helped establish in Namibia.

We step aside and give the floor to Charlie, who can describe the nature of the trip and the needs of the Namibian schoolchildren far better than we could distill.

Take it away, Charlie:

This summer I will be traveling to Namibia, a country in southern Africa. All of us in Mrs. Thomson’s fifth-grade geography classes learned about Namibia during our lessons on Africa. Several days of my trip will be just for volunteering at a local village school.

The tour group and our lodge, n’Kwazi Lodge, founded two schools in an area of northern Namibia that had been having civil unrest. The villages have since become more stable, and an increasing number of children are attending these schools.

The schools are in great need of supplies such as early reader and easy reading books in English, notebooks, pencils, soccer balls, and, of course, money.

One child in the village can attend school for a year for $6.50.

I would like to bring a large donation of supplies to these school children. If you or your family would like to make a donation, either money or supplies, there will be a box labeled “Namibia School Donations” in Mrs. Thomson’s classroom until the end of the school year on May 21. 

My family members and I will be helping at the schools, doing such things as reading books in the classrooms, serving food at lunch, and organizing after-school soccer games. I plan to deliver our donated items in July and will take photos of the children receiving them.

I promise to share the photos and stories with all of you. I thank you for your kindness and support.

Your generous donations will help these schoolchildren have a better life in this small village. For more information on the schools and the community please go to http://nkwazi-communitytrails.com/ 

Kayengona Combined School and Shambyu Combined School are two more schools in the area that receive help from the Mayana Mpora Foundation and offer grades one-seven education as well as higher standard education in grades eight-10.

We are extremely proud to point out that Kayengona Combined School is run by women.

To enable children from a less-privileged background to attend school, local parents are asked to make contributions of a non-financial nature to the school such as bringing in firewood or helping with the preparation of the maize-meal for the feeding scheme to substitute for money.

Um, wow.