Onslow kids send kits to Mozambique by Jonathan Crowe
The Equity, Dec. 17, 2003

QUYON — Mozambique may be a far-off country in southern Africa, but that hasn’t stopped the kids at Onslow Elementary School from reaching out to help.

In only eight days, they raised enough money to buy and send 150 kits of school supplies to children in the northern Cabo Delgado province of Mozambique.

“They’re not as fortunate as us,” said Grade 6 student Bailey Anderson, who is one of four student organizers. “We felt that we could do something, so we did.”

The Onslow students did it as part of Project Love, an initiative of CODE, an Ottawa-based organization that promotes literacy and education in developing countries.

Through Project Love, which was begun 17 years ago in London, Ont., CODE expects to distribute 70,000 school kits from 483 Canadian schools this year.

Each kit contains a pencil, eraser, ruler and notebook — along with a personal note from the student who assembled the kit.

The Onslow kids spent Thursday morning assembling the kits.

Grade 2 student Keegan Picard, 7, read his message to his class.

“I hope you like the gifts we gave you,” he said.

The kids raised $376 through a series of projects: a movie day where they made and sold popcorn at 25 cents a bag, a bake sale, and candygrams — bags of candy bought for someone else for 25 cents. They sold 180 bags.

In the end, Onslow’s 120 students raised a total of $376 — enough to buy 150 school kits and pay to ship them to Mozambique.

Shipping the kits overseas is both expensive and time-consuming, said Garth Brooks, CODE’s project manager for Project Love.

The kits will be collected from across Canada and warehoused until next summer, when they will be shipped to Mozambique just before the start of the school year.

Seventy-five per cent of a kit’s cost is eaten up by shipping, said Brooks. CODE works with local agencies to distribute the kits.

Normally a Valentine’s Day activity, Project Love was also fitting for the Christmas holidays, said Brooks.

“You’ve picked a good day because Christmas is a time of giving,” he said.

Brooks told a school assembly Thursday a little bit about Mozambique, where most people live on less than $1 a day, the life expectancy is 36 and the literacy rate is only 44 per cent.

A former Portuguese colony that became independent in 1975, Mozambique suffered through decades of civil war until a peace agreement was signed in 1992.

“I’d love to see the looks on their faces when they open their packages and read your letters,” said Brooks.

Note: This article has not been updated since its first publication. As a result, some of the facts referred to in the text may now be out of date.