EMAIL – Written in Spring of Eight-Grade Year bringing light to progress made and introducing ‘Genly Used Clothing Drive’ to the teacher of the school
———- Forwarded message ———-
From: Sankuratri, Yeshwin <[email protected]>
Date: Mon, Apr 25, 2016 at 7:41 PM
Subject: Clothes ‘Barefoot’ Drive
To: Andrew Grossman <[email protected]>, Gerhard Reich <[email protected]>, Kori Brown <[email protected]>, Lauren Faralli <[email protected]>, Robert Schaaf <[email protected]>, Emily Lesko <[email protected]>, Hannah Rupp <[email protected]>
Cc: Tracy Nelson <[email protected]>, Jay Greytok <[email protected]>, Jini Loos <[email protected]>, Andrew Poolman <[email protected]>, Lauren Remedios <[email protected]>
Dear All,
I hope everyone enjoyed their Spring Weekend! As some of you know, I have been working with a nonprofit organization called The Barefoot College. I have been working with this organization for about 11 months and only at the start of this year have we began to create a relationship with The Haverford School Community and the Barefoot College. Throughout this year Mrs. Nelson, Mr. Poolman, Mrs. Loos, Mrs. Brown and many other people have worked extremely hard and have helped me through the year to the stage we are now.
I am very passionate about this particular non-profit because of their vision and goal for helping the needy. This organization, located all over India, works towards educating the illiterate, providing them with opportunities and the skills to succeed in the real world.
I found out about this organization through a Ted talk that was presented by their founder, Sanjit ‘Bunker’ Roy, in 2011. He talks about how he believes that,”India and Africa are full of people with skills, knowledge and resourcefulness who are not recognized as engineers, architects or water experts but who can bring more to communities than governments or big businesses.” Ultimately, he means to say that there are numerous amounts of people that live in poverty stricken places and don’t have the right foundation and are not given the same opportunities to shine and rise up to provide for their community. This is the reason he decided to create the Barefoot College’ which is, “a place of learning and unlearning: where the teacher is the learner and the learner is the teacher.”
I visited the main venue of this organization over the summer last year and that is where I fully realized how fortunate I was to be provided with the fantastic education that I receive every day. I realized that more and more people must become aware of how much struggle the children must go through just to receive an education. We all get caught in our own little life and overlook the basic necessities that we receive every day. I understood that this organization can learn from our school, in terms of education, but our community can benefit as whole lot, in terms of our mindset and to increase the motivation to take full advantage of the opportunities given to us every day.
Progress: This year, so far, Mrs. Nelson, Mrs. Loos, Mr. Poolman, and Mrs. Brown were all involved in a Skype call with India, I educated my 8th grade section on the Barefoot College, and we have created and then exchanged videos with India regarding how different our daily lives are. We now hope to move on into the fundraising phase:
Because most of the 8th grade is now fully aware of this organization, now I would like to move into the fundraising phase by introducing a gently used clothing drive. I have discussed this idea with Mrs. Loos and Mrs. Nelson and they agree that this would be a great idea. I wanted to ask your permission for me to keep a box in each of your homeroom’s for this drive.
Please let me know if this works for you.