COLUMBUS — As Christmas approaches, students at Immanuel Center for Christian Education are thinking outside the boundaries of their school to those in need.
Both the senior and junior classes have adopted philanthropies. One is close to home. The other is thousands of miles away. But both have a special connection to the students at Immanuel.
The junior class is raising money to help build Abby Acres Horse Camp in Amory, which they hope will be ready by summer. Abby refers to Abigail Lee, the 11-year-old sister of Immanuel junior Wade Lee, an avid horse rider who died unexpectedly in July from meningitis, just months after the Lees” Amory home burned down in April.
The camp will be located on Old Highway 25 in Amory, behind the new house Wade and his family are currently building.
Juniors at Immanuel are selling shots for prizes in three-point shooting contests at basketball games, planning car washes and brainstorming more fundraisers.
Meanwhile, the senior class is selling hot chocolate and Christmas ornaments in hopes of raising $3,000 to benefit Global Connections, a charity established and managed by A. B. Puckett, brother of Immanuel senior Bailey Cartwright.
Global Connections (globalconnectionsonline.org) helps place volunteers and missionaries in impoverished nations, such as Kenya, to help at orphanages, schools or wherever local peoples will be best served. Cartwright, who has been to Kenya five times already, brought the idea to her classmates as they sought the right charity to benefit.
Lee, Cartwright and junior Amber Shoffner met Friday to discuss their classes” philanthropies.
What will the Abby Acres be like?
Lee: We”re building it behind where we”re building our house. It will be for eight-10 girls to have horse riding and a Christian devotion prayer for the day. It”s going to be pretty much anybody.
What about your sister”s passing made you decide you wanted to give back?
Lee: She was always a giving person. On her birthday before she passed, instead of asking for gifts she asked for money and dog toys and gave it all to the humane society. A week before she died, her and my mom were watching TV and she was like ”I want to be a donor.” She donated some of her organs.
What is the junior class doing to help out with this project?
Shoffner: Our class decided we wanted to do a service project this year and get more involved. Wade”s mom told us about Abby Acres, and we felt like it was something that fit our class that we could support. So we got on a fundraising drive and our goal is $3,000 by May.
How does your family feel about having the entire junior class involved in this?
Lee: They”re real grateful there”s a lot of people chipping in and willing to help. We just had a memorial fund set up. We didn”t even know what we were going to use it for. Eventually my mom came up with this idea and it seemed like a really good idea and the junior class volunteered to help raise money. I thought it was a good idea.
Talk about what the senior class is doing?
Cartwright: This is one of the first charity we”ve started. (Immanuel senior) Rebecca Dillon started the idea that hot chocolate would be a good thing to sell, so we were trying to decide what would be a good thing for it to go to.
People talked about raising it for a senior class fund, then someone suggested charity. That”s when I decided, if everybody wanted to, we should give the money to Global Connections. Global Connections is a charity my brother, A.B. Puckett, started. He wanted to get people over to Kenya to develop a closer relationship to the people you”re giving money to.
What did your family do during your time over there?
Cartwright: We worked in the Baptist compound. We started out doing little devotionals with the kids. It”s a school where there are about 100-300 kids going to pre-school or support classes for secondary or middle school. We ate breakfast and lunch with them there. They have porridge in the morning, and that”s pretty much all they eat.
We started to paint fences to make it look cleaner, but we pretty much only worked with the children and started getting involved in a program started by two Kenyans. We started going on home visits, and they make sure everyone is taking their medicine like they should. Because what they”re trying to do is care for AIDS programs and help these people understand that they can still have a life and they don”t have to be excluded. They started out working with children with AIDS, but they started trying to teach their parents how to take care of their children instead of somebody coming in to do it for them.
What was the enthusiasm of the class when you decided to hold a fundraiser?
Cartwright: I think everyone was excited to be able to do a fundraiser for the class. Everyone has done what they can. People are bringing materials or supplies or selling it. So far we”ve raised $150.
Since this is a Christian school, the stereotype is that everyone will want to help out. Is that the case, or do some people just go through the motions?
Shoffner: You have several different types of people. You have those who do live out their Christianity day to day, even when they”re not at school. Then you have those, of course, who aren”t as enthusiastic. Who aren”t going to step up willingly, at first. But I think when people start seeing results and seeing excitement in the ones who are thrilled about it, they get a little more in to it.
How do you get people involved who aren”t enthusiastic? How do you appeal to them?
Cartwright: I think that, really, everyone is guilty of going through the motions, coming in and getting it done. And it”s not always easy to have enthusiasm, especially with exams coming up. But people do want to help. When I showed the (Global Connections) video, they can see they can have a relationship with these kids. I hope to get everybody pen-palling and get everyone to write one or two of the kids so they can actually have a relationship with the people they”re helping. And I think that got people more interested because you don”t have to give money. You can give time and influence a child that way.
Jason Browne was previously a reporter for The Dispatch.
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