Intermediate School Raises $7,000 for Children of Senegal
Intermediate School Raises $7,000 for Children of Senegal
The Intermediate School raised more than $7,000 to benefit the children of Thieppe Panathie, Senegal, by producing and selling handmade items at the Project 345 Social Entrepreneurship Marketplace last May.
The money was donated to buildOn, an NGO dedicated to enhancing literacy in developing nations by helping to build schools in underserved regions of the world.
The marketplace represented the culmination of the yearlong Project 345, which included lessons about the language, culture, food, religions and geography of Senegal. The project kicked off with a discussion led by 2024 Peter G. Wilson Rising Star alumna Kyla Korvne ’08, who lives in Senegal and has dedicated her career to creating a more just and equitable world.
Throughout the year, Intermediate School students had the opportunity to form genuine connections with their international peers, writing letters to and Zooming with the children of Senegal. Some letters were in French, prompting collaboration with students from Western Reserve Academy for translation. Grade 5 students dove deeper into their research of Senegal and shared their findings with our third and fourth graders.
“This project changed how I felt about students in Senegal and in other parts of the world,” said then-fourth grader Anna Eaton ’28. “I realized that it must be very hard to get the education that we all deserve. I really hope the new school will help a lot of families.”
Project 345 originated in 2010 with then-Intermediate School Director Stephen Drosdeck’s creation of the Craft Fair, an annual event he led until his retirement in 2017. Post-pandemic, the Craft Fair evolved into Project 345, integrating global connections to foster broader cultural understanding and awareness.