Roseville High School’s recent work with the charity organization Children of Compassion connected students in the United States with students in Africa.

English teacher KC Worden decided to stray away from the original class agenda in order to help cooperate with this new program. While students in her class would normally be learning about the works of William Shakespeare, Unit four of the class is now dedicated to sponsoring orphaned and disabled children in Liberia.

Children of Compassion is a non-profit organization, whose main goal is to release children from poverty all around the world. Warden found out about this organization through assistant principal Anna Marie Clark, who knew executive director and co-founder of the organization, David Dionisi.

“We talk about our students being global citizens, we have a number of teachers on our campus who do global citizenship projects, and we really promote that idea,” Clark said.“This [program] seemed like it aligned with that idea of global citizenship and provided students with a simple thing to do to make a difference.”

After finding out that charity work can be intertwined into schoolwork, to improve students’ compassion and overall awareness of others, Worden decided to give it a try. She hoped that this unit helps teach students all about social justice, which she believed is a very crucial factor in student education.

“They are learning to deal with compassion and empathy through the curriculum,” Worden said. “It’s not just standards, but also character education.”

Liberia was chosen as the focus of the support due to the extremely low rate of doctors within the country.

Students in Worden’s class worked hard to raise money. They were given the opportunity to participate in fundraisers, make their own website to collect donations, and Skype the children for whom they were raising money.

“I am really excited for the marriage of curriculum, fundraising, and also getting to work with someone like David Dionisi, who’s so knowledgeable and bringing in so much information,” Worden said.

Dionisi focused on having students connect common core standards to the required education principles through the process of sponsoring others.

After working in Africa during the Ebola crisis, and seeing the negative impacts that the disease had on all the children, Dionisi decided that it was time to make a change.

“If we don’t step in and help them, they are much more likely to go down a path of crime, or a path of a lot of suffering, and the key is education,” Dionisi said.

This new form of education involves teaching students about social justice, and informs them of the current circumstances certain individuals, such as those in Liberia, are facing. Dionisi believes using charity work in common classes will help develop student character without neglecting the skills that the classes originally teach.

One portion of the fundraiser that the students conducted involved having to carry large buckets of water around the track for a mile. They did this in an attempt to step into the shoes of Liberian children, who must normally walk large distances to access water for their families.

Sophomore Zarah Welker, a student in Worden’s class, felt that this experience was very valuable.

“I learned to be really grateful for what I have, because if you look at pictures of [the Liberian orphans], you’re like, ‘wow that’s crazy’. I could never picture myself in that situation, and it just makes you more thankful,” Welker said.

The students have already made an impact. An estimate of $8,000 has been raised so far.

With the money raised, the students have already been able to get wheelchairs for five Liberian children who previously didn’t have access to them. They were also able to care for a young boy on his deathbed, who had burns covering half of his body, water kits for purification and clean drinking water, and food for a disabled community that was surviving on very little..

“I really appreciate that [Children of Compassion] actually gave all the [proceeds] to the kids,” Welker said.

The Children of Compassion founders hope to extend this program to schools nationwide in hopes of one day giving every orphaned or disabled child in Africa the opportunity to go to school and improve their average. quality of life.