Robert Frost Elementary students ask for community’s help to outfit library in Kenya and complete project.

For the third year running, students from Robert Frost Elementary in Kingsgate are helping build and furnish a small, one-room village library in Kenya, asking their parents and the community for help.

It all began in 2006, when school Instructional Assistant Karin Brown got to know a visitor from Africa staying at a friend’s home. She became acquainted with Theresa Saiti, a Kenyan woman on an extended stay in the US. When the time came for her to return home, Brown asked if there was anything she needed from America.

“She said one thing: Books,” said Brown.

So the nearly 30-year teacher’s aide tapped her resources at Robert Frost. She sent some old books home with Saiti, which she brought to her small village of Sirytani, Kenya, in the Bungoma District near the border of Uganda. To her surprise, Saiti’s sister wrote back thanking her and sent a photograph of local children holding up the same books she sent. The photo proved popular with students when Brown brought it to school as the students marvelled at the same books they held months ago, now in the hands of the Kenyan children. But the village had no central place to store all the books and keep them dry.

So Brown sought help from the students to build a library there, organizing the “Caring for Kenya” fundraiser through the Student Council and teaching advisers Sara Poulin and Peggy Solum. School Principal Sue Anne Sullivan said they raised $2,000 through the students, their parents and the community by taping up “bricks” for each dollar raised, eventually forming the shape of a library building in the school’s main hallway. When the library was built in late 2007, Saiti again sent photos showing the library construction and finished building, the only place in the village with a stone floor.

“It’s so concrete to the children,” Sullivan said. “When we put the pictures up, they got so excited.”

But there wasn’t enough money to furnish the library and build shelves for the books. This year, Brown and teachers Poulin and Solum are guiding the student council in their efforts to raise $1,000 to finish the work. They showed their classes a slideshow of the library and asked for donations. Many of the students believed that helping finish the library was a good thing and the only fair thing to do.

“They don’t have that many books,” said fifth-grader Connor Lee. “We can give them an opportunity to learn.”

Kirkland may be thousands of miles and oceans away from Sirytani, but Principal Sullivan said helping children in Kenya is not an abstract concept for many Robert Frost Elementary students. About 67 of her students are receiving English as a Second Language assistance after recently moving to the US.

“We try to give our children a great emphasis on caring for each other and the community,” she said.

For more information about the “Caring for Kenya” fundraiser, please contact Karin Brown at 425-821-3708.