Student Groups Travel to Provide Aid

Junior Juilen Salah helps local girls finish a puzzle on the ODFL trip to Nicaragua last summer.

Instead of dedicating their summers to sunbathing and swimming, some students will be spending their time on more charitable trips. Several students will be participating on trips to Kenya and Haiti this summer.

ODFL Goes to Kenya

Five students will be traveling to the village of Karandi in Kenya this summer with One Dollar For Life (ODFL) to build a classroom for Gakawa High School. Students will leave Wednesday, June 16 and return Thursday, July 8. Those participating include sophomores Carrie Beyer and Sophia Steffens, junior Mark Cuson, seniors Diana Chou and Nathaniel Siegel, and club adviser Lisa Bolton.

Students will spend ten days working on the construction of a new classroom for the school in Karandi. They will also stay with local families in their homes.

According to Bolton, the people in Kenya broke ground on the construction site during the last week in April. ODFL members will arrive in time to help finish the construction of the school and participate in the opening ceremony. This will be the fourth school ODFL will work on in Kenya.

About one-fifth of the money spent on the project comes from money raised at LAHS.

In Kenya, people speak Swahili, English and a mother tongue.

“No language barriers make it a much more enriching experience,” Bolton said.

Carrie, who also attended the ODFL trip to Nicaragua last summer, is looking forward to the home stays.

“I didn’t get that opportunity when I went to Nicaragua and I’m really excited,” Carrie said. “We didn’t get that connection with the community, and I’m really excited because I’ve never really gone to a home stay and just joined someone’s family.”

Carrie said she specially enjoyed experiencing the Nicaraguan lifestyle last summer.

“Here I feel like you have so many rules and [have to] follow a schedule constantly,” Carrie said. “[There] it’s not stressed, nobody gets worked up, you deal with what comes to you.”

Global Exchange goes to Haiti

Six students and history teacher Seth Donnelly will be traveling on a Global Exchange trip to Haiti during the summer.

Global Exchange is a non-profit organization based in San Francisco that organizes solidarity trips to Haiti and other poor countries. They are organizing the trip to Haiti for the middle to end of July.

According to Donnelly, students in Haiti will be helping with the physical rebuilding of the SOPUDEP school that LAHS previously supported by providing volunteer labor. They will also meet with Haitian students, activists and women’s groups, and learn about “the structure in Haiti for human rights and economic development.”

Students will also receive training in earthquake response, which they will then teach to Haitian youth through the medium of a translator, as most Haitians only speak Creole.

Students became involved in the Global Exchange trip through Donnelly’s activism with the Haiti Action Committee in the Bay Area. Donnelly approached Global Exchange as a representative of the Haiti Action Committee, suggesting that it would be “great to get youth involved.”

Student volunteers will probably stay in tents on SOPUDEP property or with the director of the school.
Donnelly and English teacher Ryan Ikeda have yet to select which students will be attending the trip. Donnelly said they have more applications than they do slots for students.

Donnelly hopes that students will continue to participate in Global Exchange trips to Haiti in the following years.

“My hope is that we will develop a sister school relationship with the SOPUDEP school,” Donnelly said. “I’m very excited for the start of something new … [for] more youth to youth ties with Haiti… and to see my friends in Haiti.”