VALLEY TEENS
Helping Others
By Alexandria Schmall
photo by Heather Haase
Life for many of Fresno’s teenagers is rough. Five days a week they have to wake up early and endure eight hours of monotonous classes, only to return home and be bombarded with homework and chores. As the week- end rolls in they are greeted with the warm embrace of Saturday morning car-
toons and blueberry pancakes. All is well in the world…un- til they suddenly realize there’s a two page Biology paper due on Monday. Man, Valley teens never receive a break.
A world away another teen goes about her daily life. She rises before the sun to prepare a simple meal of porridge for the hungry brood of siblings to soon awake. It is only after feeding and dressing the younger ones does she sit down and discover she’ll have to go without breakfast for the third time this week. After a brisk five mile walk to school, she drops off her siblings in a small classroom full of forty of their closest friends. She hasn’t gone to school since her mother caught the forbidden sickness. Her days are now occupied with weaving skirts for the man to sell to the tourists. She’s his best seamstress, and finds great pride in the fact that she’s almost saved enough to buy her siblings’ shoes- what a novelty!
Unfortunately, teens all over the world go through similar hardships every day. In a recent study by the United Nations, over 100 million children live in severe poverty without basic amenities taken for granted by teens all over the Western World. An estimated 120 million children are exploited yearly for cheap labor and human trafficking. Such drastic statistics have prompted young people everywhere to get involved in organizations that aide exploited children. Organizations like Invisible Children, Love 146, and UNICEF are the command- ing officers of the battle to end the cruel treatment of children.
Though they recognize the urgency of positive action, the thought of helping others is intimidat- ing to teens. Still young themselves, the idea of working to better the life of someone else seems impossible. The truth of the matter is, Valley teens are not powerless; if rallied together for one cause, a great impact can be made. One way Valley teens can take a step to help those in need is to join the Chiwaya Village Children’s Shoe Drive. The pur- pose of the shoe drive is to collect slightly used (or new) children’s shoes to ship to the children of Chi- waya, a rural village in Malawi, Africa, in the early summer. Shoes for both boys and girls of all ages can be dropped off at Northside Christian Church located at 2709 E. Nees Ave. in Clovis, CA 93611 un- til June 10th 2010. Although any shoes are accept- able, tennis shoes are the best suited for the terrain of Chiwaya Village. The children of Chiwaya village walk nearly twenty miles every day, despite the season, without shoes, so foot disease and infec- tion are common. The Chiwaya Village Children’s Shoe Drive is a great way for Valley teens to get involved in helping others and show affirmative leadership in their community.
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