February 8, 2012 - 1:28am
Campus Club: Childreach
BY ZENA DAVE
Childreach, a newly formed campus organization, will soon take a group of students to Peru and Tanzania to assist in renovating schools and developing sustainable programs in the two countries.
LSA sophomores Lisa Nations and Olivia Thompson lead the campus chapter that was formed this fall as a branch of Childreach International USA, a non-profit organization dedicated to improving healthcare and education for children in developing countries. The organization aims to create sustainable solutions to these problems while empowering community members.
Nations said she specifically chose to bring Childreach to the University because of its unique goal of achieving sustainable development, in addition to its international outreach.
To remain sustainable, the organization hires local community members in the countries to carry out large construction tasks before the Childreach team members arrive in order to give locals hands-on experience building so that if anything breaks or becomes run down in the future, they have the experience to fix it, Nations said.
The Childreach team members then focus their two-week trips on light renovation work, like decorating classrooms and painting the exteriors of schools.
“We get to see firsthand what all of our fundraising efforts are giving to this community, which is really awesome,” Nations said. “The fact that we run sustainable development projects means that we know that this is going to be a lasting thing for the community members in years to come, so children, say, 10 years down the road will still benefit from the work we put in.”
Thompson said the group hopes to have a safe and successful first trip as a new organization on campus and expect to expand their group in the future. Since the group was recently developed, Nations said acquiring members and informing students about the two trips was challenging.
“We had to get the word out through every avenue you could think of,” Nations said. “We put up flyers all over the place, sent out e-mails, did lecture slides and we finally are getting picked up because more and more people are talking about it with the growth of our group.”
Thompson said the organization now has about 20 members and is still accepting participants to fundraise and get involved with its trips.
