Friendly Hills Students Think Globally for 'Make a Difference Day'

eighth-graders chose to think globally for the school’s annual Make a Difference Day last Thursday, organizing a Walk for Water and a Little Dresses for Africa sewing project.

The school dedicates the last day of the third quarter every year to community outreach and awareness projects.

“We really look forward to this as teachers,” said ESL teacher , “because kids you don’t think are going to step up and shine always step up and shine. Always.”

Seventh-graders packaged 35,856 meals at Feed My Starving Children in Eagan.

Sixth-grade students collected over 2,000 food and personal items and raised $1,010 for Neighbors, Inc.

Fifth-grade students picked up 38 bags of trash and learned about clean water and keeping pollutants out of the Mississippi River.

While half the eighth-grade students took a turn walking, the other half back at school was busy measuring and cutting donated pillowcases and ribbon to sew into dresses. Boys and girls ironed fabric and operated sewing machines to make the clothes.

Students completed 76 of the simple but cheerful dresses to be donated to orphanages, schools and churches in Africa as well as the United States and areas in need such as Haiti.

'A Long Walk to Water'

The Walk for Water is now in its third year as part of Make a Difference Day. The three-and-a-half-mile walk is undertaken by the eighth-graders to recognize children growing up in draught-ridden places that have to walk for hours each day to provide their families with water.

“Some of the kids really get into it,” said special education teacher Kelly Rech. “They planned what they wanted to do.”

The students carried six liters of water in their backpacks to symbolize the trek taken by others.

 “We’ve done the water walk before because it tied in with science and the water cycle,” said science teacher and organizer Jennifer Christensen. “They were learning about clean water and how it’s hard for some countries to have access to clean water.”

This year, they took that lesson a step further. Eighth-graders read the book “A Long Walk to Water" in their homeroom classes earlier in the year.

“A Long Walk to Water” tells the story of two children from Sudan—a girl that must walk for hours every day to provide water to her family, and a boy who walks for over a year to escape political violence and eventually arrives in the United States. That boy is a real person, who went on to found a nonprofit that builds deep-water wells for villages in South Sudan.

Eighth-grader Dorine Jinkins was one of the students who helped plan the day’s activities during her flex time.   

Some students said the walk was boring, and dropped their bags with a thud at the first check point, but, Jinkins said, that’s exactly the point.

“People have to go through this every day, but in the hot, blazing sun,” said Jinkins. “It’s teaching us a lesson.”