Several months ago a few students and faculty members of Vistamar School collaborated a simple pen pal program involving their freshman with the freshman students of Bumpe High School. Under the direction of humanities and economics teacher, Blair Bowman, the students of Vistamar wrote their first drafts in October of 2009.
After a few weeks of correspondence with The Foundation office, it was agreed that the safest and speediest way to send the letters was through email. Final letters were then scanned and sent to the attention of Joe Kposowa in Bumpe the beginning of December 2009.
Last week, The Foundation office was overjoyed to have received the first wave of pen pal letters from Bumpe students to Vistamar students. The first circle of the pen pal program was complete.
We are grateful to the students and faculty of Vistamar who initiated this idea. We are also very excited for the freshman students of Bumpe High School. Pen pals are typically exciting for students of any academic level, but in Sierra Leone, where war had been prevalent for so long, an outreach like the pen pal effort Vistamar had put into place is a special treat to our students in Africa.
We encourage more schools to become involved with Bumpe High School and hope this will be a staging point for other students across the nation to share a correspondence with a student in Africa.
For information about how to get your school involved, please contact the Foundation office at (562) 432-7019. We will be happy to share and receive any ideas you may have.
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