Students at Rice Elementary School might be used to lending a pencil to a fellow classmate, but recently students at the school learned what it was like to give pencils to students on a different continent.
Earlier in the school year, students at Rice received a request from Diana Juelg, a grandmother of two former students at the school and co-founder of Hope For a Better Future, a charitable organization that serves women and children living in extreme conditions in rural Kenya and Tanzania.
Juelg is a pediatric nurse practitioner and since 2011 has traveled to East Africa to perform work at a children’s center.
Before Juelg’s most recent trip to Africa at the end of November, she enlisted the help of Rice students for the second year in a row by asking them to collect pencils for students in East Africa in need. Students took Juelg’s request to heart and collected about 1,500 pencils, which Juelg was able to deliver in person to young students during her trip.
On Feb. 2, Juelg visited Rice once more to speak with students about the cultures of people in Kenya and Tanzania and about how the donation of pencils improved the lives of students nearly halfway around the world.
“Most people in Kenya and Tanzania live on about $1 to $1.25 a day, so most people actually live on less than $500 a year,” Juelg told students. “They’re very poor in the majority of these two countries.”
Juelg said the students and teachers were appreciative of the donated pencils and would get a lot of use out of them.
“They’ll keep that pencil until there’s nothing left of it,” Juelg said.
Juelg said she thanked Rice students from the bottom of her heart for the donation, and it was her hope to plant a seed in the students’ hearts and open their eyes to a global perspective.
“We’re so fortunate in this country and we could do more,” Juelg said.
During her visit to Rice, Juelg also showed students various photos from her trip, including the huts many rural Kenyans and Tanzanians live in, the school buildings without electricity that students crowd and several pictures of Kenyans and Tanzanians themselves.
“Children in Tanzania and Kenya love to have their picture taken,” Juelg said. “Most of them have never seen themselves. They don’t have mirrors … so everybody just wants their picture taken. They just swarm around me,” Juelg said.
Juelg also presented Rice with some foreign currency and instruments from her trip, such as a drum, rattle and a thumb piano.
Fifth-grade student Juliana Donato said she had never before seen instruments like those Juelg presented.
“I have a thumb piano but it doesn’t look like this.” Juliana said.
Fifth-grade student Morgen Guers also said she liked the foreign instruments.
“I like that they’re hand-crafted and how they have really different shapes,” Morgen said.
Those who want to learn more about Juelg’s Hope For a Better Future organization and its work can visit www.hope4abetterfuture.com.
“The people that I meet in East Africa are always so open, warm hearted and welcoming,” Juelg said. “They are so grateful.”
