“Seeing the school has given me significant hope.  We saw, with our own ears, the life-changing impact that a relatively small investment can make in a country where a little goes an incredibly long way.”

 

Jake Moritz, a senior at the International High School in San Francisco, wrote this in his diary during a visit to Ethiopia in December of 2006. Jake had joined fourteen of his classmates on a unique journey to visit the children they had helped build a school for in the remote countryside village of Jemejem Legebatu. It was the first school ever built in this impoverished community.

 

 

Launched in December of 2005, Project Ethiopia was the brainchild of Elizabeth Cleere, International High School’s community service coordinator, and a group of students who were passionate about community service. Cleere teamed up with a contact from Save The Children, and made a proposal: the students would pledge to raise $30,000, and Save the Children would oversee the construction of a school in rural Ethiopia. The following December, a group of International students would travel to Africa to meet the children whose lives they were helping to change.

 

Project Ethiopia was given the green light, and over the next year Cleere recruited a small army of students to organize the fundraising effort. By June they had met their goal by raising $30,000, and the second phase of the project was about to begin: the trip to Ethiopia. What began as an ambitious fundraising project had now come full flower: a unique program that combined an education in international philanthropy with a hands-on cross-cultural experience. 

 

In December of 2006, fourteen students, Cleere, and parent Debby Hamolsky flew to Addis Ababa. 12th grader Cory Jones reflected on the journey in his trip diary: “Our first interactions with Ethiopian people were on the plane. Most were amazed to hear that we were planning to build a school to help a small Ethiopian community. They said that little aid ever makes its way to the countryside, and that what we were doing was the best thing possible because education is what they need most.”

 

The International group was met at the airport in Addis Ababa by the principal of the local International Community School, who was a friend of International High School principal Russ Jones. After three days visiting the capital, the group embarked on a half-day journey into the countryside to the tiny village of Jemejem Legebatu. When they arrived at the school construction site, they encountered two unfinished buildings, a roof on the ground, and two blue plastic tents. They later discovered these tents were serving as temporary classrooms, and for months the children had been sitting on small rocks that substituted for desks.

 

 

It was a village holiday, so there were no children to greet them, but they encountered a few laborers, and were inspired to roll up their sleeves and get to work. For the rest of the day the students labored side-by-side with Ethiopians who earned a salary of 8 birr a day – the equivalent of a less than a U.S. dollar.  They also discovered that the school and the village did not have running water, so the students made a pact:  when they got home, they would raise more money to dig a well.  (They went on to raise $10,000, and the well was completed in 2007.)

 

The next morning turned out to be the highlight of the trip. 10th grader Gabriela De Golia wrote in her diary, “We saw the children today! I was happy to be able to play with them, and give them gifts. But there was a bittersweetness, too: the fact that we didn’t have enough pencils or crayons for everyone, and how we had to eat our lunch out of plain view so they would not come begging for a bite to eat or a sip of fresh water to drink.”

 

Some of the high school students led a reading group, while others organized impromptu games. 12th grader Lee Kusmer discovered a shared love of soccer with a child named Abebe Ego. “Abebe and I met several times over the course of the day: it was he who first passed the ball back and forth with me and convinced the other students that, unlike volleyball, this was a game to be played with one’s feet. He looked very precocious in his smart beige suit, and sure enough, when I examined his notebook, he had perfect scores on every assignment.”

11th grader and musician Nick Bauer was hoping to communicate with the children through music. “I was hoping the children would sing a song to greet us,” Nick recalled, “and they did, a call and response style of song.” After the children finished, Nick pulled out three guitars donated by the parents of 9th grader Celeste Makoff. “The children loved them,” Nick wrote.  “After listening to a pretty improvisation by Celeste, they began to play them, too.”

 

A few months later, Getachew Dibaba of Save the Children sent an encouraging report from Jemejem Legebatu, where he interviewed a 12 year-old girl named Dera Abera. “I could not have attended school if this school had not been built,” said Dera. “In our village, parents are afraid to send children, particularly girls, to schools that are very far from the village.” 

 

Two of Dera’s sisters are also among the 229 students now attending the school. “Our teachers tell us that we can combat poverty through education,” she said.  Dera, who is now in third grade, aspires to be a doctor. “I want to build a clinic for our community when I grow up,” she says.  

 

 

 

When the International students returned home, Cory Jones produced a short documentary of the trip, “Brick by Brick”. A trailer posted on You Tube attracted the attention of the local ABC and CBS affiliates in San Francisco, and Project Ethiopia was featured in two segments on the nightly news. When Cory was being interviewed, he got a bit carried away by his own enthusiasm. “I don’t see why we should stop here.  I’d like to see students from our school go on to build schools all over the world!”  

 

Two years later, Cory’s dream doesn’t seem so outlandish. The students were asked to take part in a similar project in M’bour Senegal, so bolstered by their success with Project Ethiopia, they went on to launch Project Senegal.  By the end of the 2007 school year they had raised $8,000 to help build a pre-school in the poorest district of M’bour.  In October of 2008 the school opened its doors to 200 children, and is also serving as a center for health care and education, offering night classes to girls who are forced to work during the day, and providing a space for their mothers to develop job skills.  

 

Twelve students from International High School are now preparing to travel to Senegal to volunteer at the school they helped build. Corbin Halliwill describes what he hopes to get from the experience:

 

“I have spent many hours and lots of energy organizing, discussing, and working to raise money for the school in Senegal.  The only thing missing now is direct human interaction with the people there, and I would be honored to be part of this process. I believe the enthusiasm I will bring back will encourage others to learn more about countries like Senegal that, despite their problems, have so much to offer.”  

 

Guided by the principles of academic rigor and diversity, the French American International School offers programs of study in French and English to prepare its graduates for a world in which the ability to think critically and to communicate across cultures is of paramount importance.