Back to School Back Packs
Now that the school summer vacation is almost over, we need to inspire and encourage our children to learn, but to do that we need to give them the right tools. Hence when Ki-Mani Olivacce reached out to The Rotary Club of St. Maarten-Mid Isle to help students in need within the community, to equip them for the school year they were ready to help.
It takes compassion to think of others who are in need. While we are all taught to share and help our neighbors, 18-year-old Ki-Mani Olivacce a 12th grade student of The Learning Unlimited Preparatory School, was inspired to take it to the next level. For the fourth year in a row Ki-Mani and his foundation ‘Voices of our Children’ have reached out to the community to come together to donate to a worthy cause of a ‘Back to School Drive’ for students in need. Ki-Mani is to be commended for taking this initiative four years ago to start this project, in fact in February of this year The Rotary Club of St. Maarten-Mid presented him with a Paul Harris Fellowship in recognition of his initiative.
The Rotary Club of St. Maarten-Mid Isle heeded the call for the fourth year under the Leadership of Service Projects Director Grace Linger. This year the foundation ‘All about a Smile’ was once again on board and donated 48 back packs, the items in the back packs were funded by the Mid Isle Rotarians and Rotarian Jeff and friends. Last Saturday July 20th, Mid Isle Rotarians packed the forty-eight school back packs for the less fortunate students in our community. This amounted to twenty-four back packs for elementary school students, and twenty-four back packs for secondary school students which have all the necessary items for the start of the new school year 2019-2020. The back packs consist of color pencils, markers, crayons, pens, pencils’, pencil cases, scientific calculators, rulers, erasers, folders, 3 ring binders, loose leaf paper, copy books, geometry sets etc.
‘Education is not preparation for life, education is life itself’. – John Dewey