“Helping Out, One Pencil at a Time,” Friend, October 2017
Helping Out, One Pencil at a Time
Illustration by Apryl Stott
It all started when my stake set up a project to help refugees. I really liked the project, so I asked my mom to tell my schoolteacher about it, and my teacher wanted to do something with the fourth grade. To set the example for the project, my sister, Maddie, and I went door to door asking for donations.
The day came to present the project to the rest of the fourth grade. I was a bit nervous. Actually, I was super freaked out, but I did my best. I told all the other fourth graders what we needed for school kits for the refugees. I told about how we went door to door, and I gave them a challenge to try to do better than me in raising money. Together we made over 100 kits! We put in notebooks, pencils, and other school supplies. We also added a note to say, “Welcome to Germany!”
My mom and I took the kits to the refugee camp. I wouldn’t say the camp was nice, but there was a playground and an area for learning academics. There was a train next to the camp that was really loud, and the kids told me it sounded like jets flying by in Syria and other places like that. Maybe it sounded like bombs to the kids who had heard them in their home countries.
I met a few kids at the camp my age, including Daniel, an awesome chess player. I didn’t get to play chess against him, which was too bad because I love chess, but they invited me to play foosball and ping-pong. The boys told me that they missed their homes and really wanted to leave the camp and go to school again.
After we played foosball and ping-pong, we handed out the kits. I feel good that I could do something kind for the kids who lived at the camps.