Kids Teaching Kids

When Chanute Elementary School students aren't in class, they can often be found raising money to help kids who live in poverty.

To support Derick in Ghana and Monica in Honduras — two children sponsored in Compassion's program — Chanute Elementary students in Kansas work together to collect $76 each month. Some of the Kansas students come from families without a lot of money, so they come up with creative ideas to raise cash. Selling doughnuts and cookies, running lemonade stands, and doing extra chores are a few ways they've done it.

The students learned about Compassion's program from a classmate's grandma who sponsors a child and from fifth-grade teacher Margaret Bideau, who traveled to Uganda to visit a Compassion center. When Mrs. Bideau returned, she taught parents, school staff members and students about the poverty she saw in Uganda and about the ways Compassion helps kids who don't have enough medicine, food or clean water. Now, when fifth-graders go classroom to classroom each month to collect donations, they often educate other kids about problems related to poverty.