Dear Friends,
I am happy to announce that the cell phone project we started last year at my old school, Sunshine Elementary was a great success again this year.
I visited last Tuesday for the final collection of phones and to tell the K_Kids about the Kindness in the Community blog which will allow K-Kids who are moving on to middle school next year a way they to continue with their community service projects. There will be more on that story later.
Please read the article below and think about how you can help the next Cell Phone for Literacy project in 2013.
Until next time, ask yourself this one question, “How Can I show Kindness in My Community.”
Blair
Sunshine Elementary K-Kids collect cell phones for literacy for the second year.
For their second year in a row the Sunshine Elementary school K-kids club joined forces with the Lehigh Acres Kiwanis Club by organizing a used cell phone drive to help fund literacy classes for minority language children in South Asia. The purpose of the activity was to “go green” while helping children in South Asia learn to read and write in their own languages before entering public school. Last year the K-Kids collected enough phones to sponsor a whole year of literacy for 9 children in Senegal, West Africa. This year the focus is on South Asia.
Public schools in the national language are available for all children. But with hundreds of minority languages spoken in South Asia, many children start school not speaking the national language. This is difficult and the students often get discouraged and drop out. School officials tell us that children who learn to read in their own language first before transitioning to the majority language, do much better and even excel in the public schools.
The kids were quite excited about providing an outlet for the Lehigh Acres community to help protect the environment by recycling old cell phones, while at the same time helping minority language children in South Asia in a very tangible way. The promise of a snow cone party for the winning class helped as well! Rose Davis, Sunshine Elementary K-Kids Faculty Advisor, said, “I’m excited about this… and the good it will do. It was an awesome project.”