Published: Wednesday, November 10, 2010
Loretta Robinson
The Muskegon Chronicle
Photo by Sarah BarnardMona Shores High School's Amnesty International chapter camped overnight in cardboard boxes on the school's football and track field to raise awareness of the worldwide plight of oppressed women, while raising funds to help build a school in Cambodia.To raise a child may take a village, but Mona Shores High School’s Amnesty International Chapter found a heartwarming way this fall to raise awareness of the plight of oppressed women worldwide, while raising funds to help build a school in Cambodia.
They did it with a makeshift cardboard village.
On Oct. 30, 50 students from the local high school with adult chaperones camped overnight in cardboard boxes on the school’s football field with temperatures dipping into the 30s.
The chapter’s event, which was closed to the public, was organized by 17-year-old Mona Shores high school seniors Maggie Barnard and Kaitlyn Rabach, who also are co-presidents of Mona Shores Amnesty International Chapter.
“It exceeded my expectations,” Rabach said of the overnight event.
“It went absolutely awesome, exactly as we planned,” said Maggie Barnard, who’s sister, Molly Barnard, is the president of the Grand Valley State University chapter of Amnesty International, a 2008 graduate of Mona Shores and co-founder with her sister of the local high school’s chapter.
Prior to the overnight venture, participants were instructed to bring warm clothes, snacks, sleeping bags, blankets, pillows and decorating supplies for the cardboard boxes that they would be constructing to sleep in that night.
“It was very cold,” Barnard said. “What kept running through my mind was that people have had to experience this across the world. This is normal.”
Such a chilling effect and oppression of poverty is just what the two organizers had hoped for themselves and other campers when they began planning the event this summer.
“At 8 p.m., the gates opened and we started decorating the boxes,” Rabach said. “At 10 p.m., the gates officially closed and the events kicked off.”
The event featured movies, popcorn, pizza, hot chocolate and enough activities to keep the students busy and the chaperones on the move.
The camp’s agenda also included “role-playing” activities for the students to tackle that simulated the struggles and hardships of oppressed women, with an emphasis on the “human-trafficking” of women, in America and abroad, Barnard said.
Those activities included a piggyback ride race and cinder block relay race that symbolized the burdens carried by women in a developing world and a three-legged race to symbolize the bondage of human trafficking of women.
Miss Michigan Katie Lynn LaRoche, whose service focus is combating human trafficking, was the chapter’s keynote guest speaker at the event.
“She was phenomenal,” Rabach said. “She really touched a lot of kids with her speech.”
The local chapter’s inspiration this year to focus and educate others on the plight of oppressed women while raising funds for the construction of a school in Cambodia came about after the chapter’s adult advisors and some chapter student members read “Half the Sky,” by Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn, according to a news release submitted to The Chronicle by Jeremy Miller, who is the chapter’s adult co-advisor with Shannon Conrad, both teachers at the high school.
“This book discusses the problems women face around the world; poverty, disease, infant mortality, high birthrates, violence, human trafficking, forced prostitution, human slavery, and abuse,” Miller said.
The cardboard village is just one of many fundraisers planned by the chapter for the Cambodia school construction. The event raised about $8,000. The chapter’s goal for the school year is $13,000 for the build.
“If they are able to reach their goal this year, the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank will each contribute $10,000 toward the construction of a school in Cambodia for a total of $33,000,” Miller said of the chapter’s fundraising effort. “The impact will be felt by a village in that impoverished country, where the fortunes of generations will be forever changed.”
For Rabach, the cardboard village experience is an event she said she would repeat “in a heartbeat.”
“I think it raised a lot of money, it was a lot of fun, we learn a lot and I really, truly believe everyone had a great time,” Rabach said.
Barnard and Rabach credit the success of the cardboard village to a host of supporters, including their schoolmates, school, families, sponsors, contributors and the chapter’s adult co-advisors.
“Truly, I don’t know what we would do without them,” Rabach said. “Everyone who was there, who participated in the event, really did make a difference. ... Without them, we could not have done this and we could not have reached our goal.”
Rabach and Barnard, who are longtime friends and schoolmates, said they’re passionate about their fight for human rights and their efforts to make change through education and public awareness.
“It was definitely a lot of work, but it all paid off,” Barnard said of the chapter’s overnight fundraiser.
“This is one of the greatest thing I’ve ever done in my life and not just as a teacher,” Miller said. “Seeing these students take off and do this is the reason that you go into teaching.”
For more information about the group and their fundraising projects or to make donations, contact Conrad at 231-780-4711, ext. 8390 or go online to the high school's Amnesty International website.
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