Last Dec. 6, Scott Cummins left his Magnolia home and headed for the community center to meet a group of 20 Ballard High School students. They were to prepare boxes of goods to be shipped to Uganda, in East Africa. Most of the Ballard High student body headed to Tacoma that day to watch their football team play in the state championships. Cummins recalls watching TV spots of Tacoma Dome tailgate parties before leaving to meet his cadre. Speaking of the students' choice to honor their previous commitment to the Ugandan students and risk missing the big game, Cummins says: "Motivation like that - wow."
The man who inspired Cummins and the students to spend that Saturday morning sorting and packing thousands of pounds of donated clothes, books and school supplies is another Magnolia resident, Terry McGill. Fifteen years ago McGill founded an organization called Sister Schools. Next month, he and Cum-mins travel to Uganda on behalf of Sister Schools to unpack those boxes, along with thousands of others, and give the contents to Ugandan orphans and schoolchildren.
The idea for Sister Schools came to McGill after he returned from holding soccer clinics in Uganda in 1988. The former Seattle Pacific University player was moved to do something for the students he met, whose schools often lacked the basic necessities. A group of Seattle-area schoolchildren provided the initial impetus for Sister Schools. After McGill visited a friend's classroom to show slides and share his experiences, the students asked whether they could send things along with him on his next Africa trip.
McGill ob-liged, stuffing as much as he could into a pair of suitcases. This year, McGill and Cummins will unpack a 40-foot container filled with nearly 30,000 pounds of items donated by students at 11 Western Washington schools. The organization estimates that it has sent a total of nearly 200,000 pounds of goods since its inception. More than 100 schools and 40,000 students have participated in the program, according to the group.
"Photographs have been a very important part of this project from the get-go," says Cummins, a college friend of McGill's who has volunteered with Sister Schools for a year. In order to connect the students at home with their Ugandan counterparts, McGill returns to each donating school with photos from his trip. He says seeing their gifts being worn and used by children a half a world away motivates the students to seek other ways they can make a difference. "Our emphasis is not just on the kids in Uganda - it's on our kids," says McGill, a father of two elementary-school students.
Three students from Mulkilteo's Harbour Pointe Middle School said they were motivated to help after seeing McGill's presentation. The three, who attended Sister Schools' annual fundraising luncheon March 30, said their school donated upwards of 11,000 items. Seeing Harbour Pointe band shirts and their old possessions in the hands of the Ugandan children "was cool," they all commented. Said 14-year-old Taylor Skillman, "The things you don't appreciate anymore, they appreciate."
Teacher Kari Cochrane said the Sister Schools program had a "tremendous impact" at her school, John Hay Elementary. Speaking at the fund-raiser, she said, "Children love to serve," and thought donating their old things was a great way to get students involved in philanthropic work. "They live a little through their possessions," she commented.
Founder and executive director McGill says he and the organization's board have big dreams. They hope to expand the program in upcoming years to include donation drives for students on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, which was picked because it's America's poorest ZIP code. Giving locally is also being discussed. "I'd love to see a school do it every year," said McGill. "International first, then national, then local."
Board member Ken Burr asked the 115 people who gathered at Bell Harbor International Conference Center for the fundraising luncheon to help fund the expansion by quadrupling the group's annual budget from $15,000 to $60,000. Burr cited costs such as $8,000 to ship the goods to Africa and $5,000 for a new resource center to serve four or five schools in Uganda as examples of how donations were spent. He added that the board thinks McGill, who works tirelessly for the group yet began drawing a small salary only this year, deserves much more as well.
Sister Schools is also going hi-tech as part of its expansion efforts. Cummins plans to shoot digital video of the April trip for use online and in DVDs. Future school assemblies may feature videos of the students' donations being handed out and personal messages of thanks, he said. Cummins added that the group also wants to solicit donations of computers some day, but Uganda's poorly developed power system means a reliable, long-lasting laptop batteries must be available first. He estimates Sister Schools could one day send up to 10,000 laptops per year.
Queen Anne resident Nathan Morehouse visited Uganda with McGill in 2000. He had gone to Uganda previously with a religious group and was interested in what Sister Schools was doing. When asked about the impact of the group's efforts, Morehouse replied, "Sister Schools is exactly the sort of thing the schools in Uganda need."
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