By Bettye Craft
The five members of Girl Scout Troop 40332 will be graduating this year and as their final community service project they decided to partner with the African Library Project. The Troop will be collecting 1000 books and $500 that will be used to furnish a library in Chawe Primary School in Malawi.
The Troop shared this information at Girl Scout Thinking Day where Leah Livingston, the Site Coordinator for Communities In Schools of Lakewood at Tillicum Elementary, became aware of the project. She took the information back to the students in her Music Club and they decided to choose it as their take action project for the quarter. Each quarter the students have a theme and choose music and a project that relates to that theme. The theme this quarter is “My Story Can Empower Others” and they were inspired to do a coin drive to help with the purchase of books for the Chawe Primary School library.
The students set a daunting goal of $700 to purchase books for the students in Chawe Primary School. By March 18th, the students were able to collect $491.83. Impressive, but they wanted to continue to work on reaching their goal. Then Lesly, a student, wrote a letter that was shared on Facebook: “We are doing a fundraiser to buy books for a school in Malawi, Africa. Not many of the people there know how to read. We have books and they barely have any. It would mean a lot to the boys and girls for them to have a library full of books and learn how to read. So can you help us meet our goal of $700? Help us and them. Thank you a lot.” Their goal of $700 was achieved.
If you would like to help Troop 40332 reach their goal, you may contact their troop leaders at: craftybettye@msn.com.
And if you would like to work with a group of impressive kids contact Leah at leah.cisl@gmail.com. In 2013, Communities In Schools, the nation’s leading dropout prevention organization, selected Leah Livingston as one of five recipients of the “Unsung Heroes” award, a national honor recognizing individuals who demonstrate excellence in helping students overcome obstacles to succeed. You can view a video about this award at the Communities in Schools of Lakewood site.