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Date: 5/21/2015
EAST LONGMEADOW – Birchland Park Middle School has exceeded its $8,250 fundraising goal for H20 for Life, a national organization that seeks to raise funds to build clean water wells in South Sudan.
Birchland Park Principal Timothy Allen told Reminder Publications the fundraiser was able to raise an additional $1,000, which will be used for a new drilling rig to be used by different organization, “Water for South Sudan.”
The $8,250 will be used for a village in South Sudan to drill a well, he explained. After the well is drilled, a school will be built in the village with money previously given to the organization from other fundraisers.
“It’s never easy to take on a project this large and a lot of people had to work very hard and the community really had to embrace it and help us and all of the above happened,” he added.
A pasta dinner fundraiser that took place on March 5 at Birchland Park Middle School contributed to a large portion of the donations, Allen noted.
The idea for the H20 for Life fundraiser was sparked when all students and staff read “A Long Walk to Water” by Linda Sue Park last summer, according to a press release from Birchland Park.
“Water for South Sudan” is run by Salva Dut, the main character in the book, who was one of about 3,800 Sudanese “Lost Boys” that were airlifted to the United States in the early and mid-1990s.
Salva led about 150 boys on foot through hundreds of miles of hostile territory, overcoming starvation, disease, and animal attacks, before reaching safety in Kenya, according to information on Park’s website. He was then relocated in upstate New York, where he learned English and continued on to college. He eventually returned to southern Sudan and established a foundation that installs deep-water wells is remote villages.
Dut issued an “Iron Giraffe Challenge” to students in October 2014 for 50 schools to each raise $1,000 for a new drilling rig. The “Iron Giraffe” is what children call the drilling rig in “A Long Walk to Water.”
“Probably, most importantly, we hope that our young adolescents realize that even though some of these problems are very far from where we live, with a little hard work, we can make a huge difference in places in the world that need help,” Allen added.
Fundraising efforts by students included a carnation sale, bake sales, T-shirt and water bottle sales as well as students collecting donations at local events, he noted.