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Nanaimo students raise money for African orphans

NANAIMO – Four Dover Bay Secondary School students led fundraising to aid a Congolese orphanage.

Four Dover Bay Secondary School students sprung into action, embarking on a fundraising campaign last week to aid a Congolese orphanage.

The Congo has been ravaged by civil war and after hearing about Grace Ministry Children’s Home in Kilomoni, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Grade 12 students Andrew de Groot, Wes Richardson, Hannah Rudson and Jake Ross raised money through events during a few days last week.

The students talked to clothing organizations RSDK and Alternative Groove and were able to secure a number of items, which were used in raffle ticket fundraising.

“One of the things we were doing was a draw, so you enter the draw and you win one of the clothing items and we had a jelly bean contest, so you guess how many jelly beans are in a jar and you win the jelly beans and a $25 gift card,” de Groot said, adding that chocolate bars were also sold to raise money. As of Friday, more than $400 had been raised. De Groot said a desire to see the orphans happy was their inspiration.

“These kids in North Africa and Congo, their orphanage, they didn’t have anything ... they just looked so happy and we thought we could help them, so we did,” he said.

“Over seven million people have been killed during the civil war, so a lot of children are orphans now, so we thought we could help with that.”

De Groot said he and his fellow students are hoping to raise more money for the orphanage in the future. “We’ve been able to raise awareness about it for sure in our community and through parents in the school system too,” de Groot said. “Hopefully people will continue to donate and we can still raise more money for them.”

Please visit http://grace-orphanage.org.



Karl Yu

About the Author: Karl Yu

After interning at Vancouver Metro free daily newspaper, I joined Black Press in 2010.
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