Helping hands reach for the Congo

By Carmen Cusido

September 28, 2009, 8:51PM

WEST WINDSOR -Sarah Yue, 13, feels a sense of humility knowing she can access drinkable water without having to walk several miles. Photo courtesy of Cheryl CiarancaChildren at Kaboke School in the Democratic Republic of Congo were presented with about 200 books and dictionaries collected by eighth grade students at Community Middle School in Plainsboro last year as part of "Hands Across the Water, " an initiative started by Cheryl Ciaranca, an eighth grade special education teacher at the middle school.

Teens sometimes only think of themselves, the drama that's going on at school, their own school work. But there are kids (in Africa) who worry about day-to-day survival.

Yue said that a youngster's whole perspective changes when he or she realizes that.
Maybe it's not only about me. Maybe there are other people suffering in the world, said Yue, a freshman at West Windsor-Plainsboro High School North, who began communicating with Eugenia, 12, a Congolese student, last December.

Yue has joined many other children in the district who are part of a correspondence program that, over two years, has evolved into an effort to share understanding and even books and computers with less-fortunate African children in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

In her e-mail communications with Eugenia, Yue learned the young girls brother died of AIDS at age 10 and that she had to walk many miles to get drinking water and use a computer at an Internet cafe. Yue also learned that students like Eugenia also take education seriously. She asked me to correct her English when we were e-mailing back and forth, said Yue.

Yue began corresponding with her African pen-pal when she was a Community Middle School student a year ago. The program itself is two years old. A Google search two years ago led Cheryl Ciaranca, a special education eighth grade teacher at the Plainsboro school, to an instructor at Kaboke School, in the Kivu region, at the eastern end of the Congolese nation.

Students from Ciaranca assigned a team of 100 students became pen-pals with African pupils soon after. But what started as an electronic pen-pal venture has become a series of fundraising efforts. Ciaranca has now made Hands Across the Water, the pen-pal initiative, an after-school club, open to sixth, seventh and eighth grade students.

In addition to selling Congolese artwork and note cards illustrated with the African students paintings, the club is planning a benefit concert Nov. 20 at the school featuring three local bands at a cost of $10 per ticket, Ciaranca said. The club plans to raise enough money to buy a laptop or two to ship to students there. The club will also make a presentation at the concert about the situation in the Congo and where the patrons money is going, Ciaranca said, adding that all proceeds are going to CENEDI, a French non-governmental organization that works with the school.