Several months ago, our dear friend, Lisa…or Makuwa Lisa as she’s known in her current country of residence, visited us for a short bit after the holidays. She was home on vacation to visit friends and family. She is living in South Africa at the moment, volunteering for AFnetAID helping AIDS orphans. While in the Bay Area, she spoke with several schools about her work with orphans. My girls were fascinated.
Lisa talked about how many of the orphans cannot read or write by my girls’ age. Most don’t have the resources we do. The basic essentials are hard to come by – books, worksheets, pens, pencils, scissors, crayons – or at least, not as numerous as here. Songwriter was particularly concerned and immediately started on her little project. She created several worksheets for Lisa’s kids. She drew animals and wrote math sentences. Each was designed to help teach them reading, writing, adding and subtracting while having fun coloring.
When Lisa has time and paper, she makes photocopies of the worksheets and brings them to the schools. Lisa mentioned that the Teddy Bear color by numbers, numbers they had to add, is a particular favorite among the school kids. And she sends us photos of the kids using the worksheets so Songwriter can save them in her scrapbook.
At 7 years old, the world is not that complicated. I don’t think Songwriter realizes how her small act of thoughtfulness can make at least a tiny bit of difference in someone else’s life. Maybe someday she will.
An original post to It’s Never Easy But It’s Always Fun blog.
It's Never Easy But It's Always Fun 