Categories
Service Learning

Reaching Beyond Borders

By Jack Pippen, Class of 2015

This summer I was fortunate to spend nearly a month traveling across southern Africa in order to distribute donations made by Lakehill families and teach in a small Namibian school. I spent a week in a small community that my family and I have worked with in rural Namibia where few households have running water, electricity, steady incomes, or access to healthcare. The school teaches in English and has a promising student population.

Our purpose was to give the students the tools they need to succeed. I spent six hours a day teaching English, language, and vocabulary skills to students my age, using the books and curriculum used at Lakehill. I felt a real bond with these students because I was teaching them material that I had once been taught.

When I wasn’t teaching, I helped to organize and distribute our donations: 21 large boxes of donated books and clothes waiting that we had shipped before our trip. We had enough books for many class sets, as well as significantly increasing the collection of the library that we started a few years ago. We also realized that we had enough clothes for each student in the school to get at least one shirt or jacket. We went from classroom to classroom to distribute every piece of clothing. For many of the school children, this was only their third or fourth shirt or their only jacket. I stayed after school to watch the sports day events. The girls played netball (a sport like basketball) and the boys played soccer against other schools. Both teams were wearing donated Lakehill clothes as their uniforms. The boys had made soccer uniforms out of old yellow Trek For Tech shirts and blue PE shorts.

I am so grateful to everyone in the Lakehill community who donated to this cause.

Jack Pippen helps get books and uniforms for African school.
Jack Pippen helps get books and uniforms for African school.