Paige Wilson
Staff Writer/ Ast. Business Manager
Video by: Sophie and Christina Valdez
As Homecoming ended the mums and guarders all go away except for little buttons with a bright face appear on shirts, bags, and mums. However there is a story of sadness and struggle behind that face that many people don’t know. That story of tragedy is what provoked the Hope For Africa club to change their its yearly charity after three years of working to drill wells in Africa.
Humphrey’s bright smiling face is the new face of the Hope for Africa charity. Many people understand that Humphrey is an unprivileged kid who doesn’t receive the necessities in life but, they don’t realize that is only part of his struggle. The main problem Humphrey suffered from was being sold into human trafficking. Hope For Africa is now working with Touch A Life, which assists in rescuing children from human trafficking.
It is a little expensive but, the club feels that it is worth it. The Touch a Life organization creates villages in Ghana where they basically adopt the children into. Humphrey is at The Village of Hope. There they provide him housing, food, medical, and education.
Humphrey was sold into human trafficking at at age 4. He and many other children suffer this same fate. Majority are sold to plantations where they are used to fish in rivers for up to 14 hours a day. They receive terrible living conditions and the majority of the kids are only 4 or 5. Majority of the kids die after only a year or two from disease, starvation, or drown in the river because very few of them actually know how to swim.
Hope for Africa has been doing the water wells charity for three years and presidents seniors Emily Fowler and Hannah Yates could tell the students were starting to lose interest.
“In high school it is really easy for the students to get bored and we were sensing that occurring with the old charity so we knew we had to do something,” Yates said. “Originally we were just going to change the design of the buttons but, we ended up doing a lot more.”
The group contacted the Touch a Life Organization who works with children in Ghana to get them out of human trafficking. They talk to Pam Cope who is their liaison for the project who told them the story of Humphrey. When the found him he had cerebral malaria and if they had found him any later he would have died. This helped them choose Humphrey to sponsor.
This was the perfect charity to change things up and get students excited.
“This was a great way for students to actually connect with the charity, because we could put a face to the cause,” Fowler said.
This charity was a little bit more difficult to raise money for because it $5 a day to sponsor a child. This will be a year round charity because they have to raise $150 a month. So to make it even more interactive Hope for Africa bought a giant calendar and for every $5 donated you can pick the day you want your money to go to.
The charity seems to be doing well with students. Senior Mackenzie Orr is participating in the charity and is also excited about the new project
“I think what they did was a great way to keep the charity and fresh and it has a cool new service element to it,” Orr said.
Hope for Africa is ready to do more. In October their consultant with Touch a Life, Pam Cope is going to Gahanna to visit the village and to tell Humphrey that we are sponsoring. They hope that the will get more information and pictures on Humphrey’s status and to start writing letters.
