The best friends they've never met

When Michaela Perry was planning for her birthday this year, she made an unusual request.

Instead of presents, the third grader at Blue Hills Elementary asked each of her party guests to bring school supplies.

“I have lots of things that other people don’t have,” she said. “Those kids need to learn. I thought it was time to give to someone else.”

The items that Michaela collected were added to the hundreds her fellow students had already donated at Blue Hills for school children in Honduras. The idea for the community service project came from principal Sandi Rahm and PTA president Janet Dover after a group of 12 teachers from Honduras visited the school last fall.

During the visit, Rahm said she learned of the school conditions in Honduras. Although many buildings now have electricity, there are few textbooks or supplies for the children to use. Unlike in the United States, the Honduran government does not fund public education, so teachers are left to come up with creative ways to provide educational and learning supplies to their students.

“They have these traveling classrooms that can be created for teachers down there because there are no materials for teachers to work with,” she said. “Everything they have has to be purchased out of pocket.”

The group of Honduran teachers were in the United States thanks to the Friends United program. Created in 1987 by three teachers in Independence, Friends United works to organize and present workshops in the core subject area more teachers in the under-developed county. It has also created several small libraries and resource rooms as well as donated school supplies and textbooks to the schools and teachers in its program.

In total, the students at Blue Hills, collected more than 500 items and raised more than $400 for the program.

Charlotte Ruoff, president of Friends United, said without help from the public, the organization could not continue to do what it does.

“In my opinion, this is the best way to promote peace by getting to know your friends and neighbors in the world,” she said. “Because we are not a nationwide program, all of what we do is through what people help us with.”

After seeing a presentation on the conditions in Honduras, kindergarten teacher Lori Archer brought the lesson of giving back to her classroom.

“I think our kids take the things they have for granted,” she said. “It really was an eye opener because they don’t have the basic things that we have. So we came back to the classroom and spent three minutes looking for things that we are not going to use this year. The kids came up with extra crayons, glue and markers to donate to the kids in Honduras.”

Rahm said she hopes to make the collection an annual service project at the school. She said the most important thing for the children to understand is that there is a world beyond their door.

“It is their responsibility as a good citizen to reach out to help others,” she said. “We all are the same. We all have the same desires to have the best opportunities we can to learn. It is not a big world anymore. We are all one and the same. It is nice for kids in a small community in Eastern Jackson County to go thousands of miles to Honduras in order to touch the lives of young people.”