Middle School Girls Organize Social Justice Project to Raise Money for Africa

Over 20 girls in a social studies class at are joining together to raise funds to donate to Africa.

The social justice effort has been dubbed HAHA, which has two meanings, Helping Americans Help Africa and HIV AIDS Hunger Academics.

Social studies teacher Colleen Perry assigned her eighth grade class to do a project that explained major social issues in specific countries in Africa. Perry said that the same issues kept coming up in the projects, such as hunger, aids and lack of education.

The class jointly came to the conclusion that many of the issues trace back to the lack of education.

Perry’s curriculum is focused on world culture. She said her class is set up to look at the surface of things, dig a little deeper, and then look at social justice issues. 

The girls in the class were so moved by the issues they asked Perry, “Can we really do something?”

Every school day the girls meet for lunch at Perry’s classroom to discuss strategy.

Their first fundraiser was a lollipop sale in which they made $200.  Just recently the girls held a bake sale on Thursday and Friday during parent teacher conferences. They plan on holding another bake sale during Forensics night at the middle school on March 17.

The group is currently looking into charities to donate the money they raise.

In the future the group plans to expand on selling bracelets. The brainstorming isn’t done. The group wants to organize a community-wide walk for HAHA, said the group’s public relations chair Kamilan Lay.

The class chose an executive board to keep structure. The president is Maggie Hackl, vice president is Mary Carolan, secretary is Sarah Slater and Lay is the public relations chair.

"We really hope to raise as much money as we possibly can to support a charity of our choice," Lays said.

The girls are learning to work together.

“There are strong personalities and they all have different ideas,” Perry said. “It’s hard, especially with all girls.”

Lay says that it has been a challenge working with clashing personalities but knows there will be a good outcome.

“Tempers flair,” Lays said. “We get frustrated with each other but we know that we are working towards something good. It’s really good volunteer work. We’re actually getting volunteer credits. We didn’t even know that when we begun.“

Perry and Lay say there has been talk about adopting a child in Africa and raising money to send to the child. However, Perry warned the girls that they would need to stick with the project all the way through high school.

Lay says they are considering the idea.