NYC Kids Travel to Soft Power Health Uganda!

     Kayaking can make the world feel like a smaller, interconnected place especially when you travel to far away rivers and meet foreign paddlers who share a similar love of whitewater. But sometimes-extraordinary things happen through the world of kayaking that make the world at large seem smaller and interconnected for people outside the kayaking world.

     Last spring a group of high school students from Boys and Girls Harbor’s Upward Bound program in New York City got together and raised money to buy mosquito nets for needy kids in Uganda.
      How did these vastly different worlds get connected and how did kids in New York get interested in helping kids in Uganda? The simple answer to both questions is kayaking. The New York kids had been kayak students of mine in our summer inner city kids kayaking program and had been really curious about Soft Power Health’s work in malaria education and prevention in Uganda. And they decided they wanted to help kids like themselves in Uganda by raising money to buy, mosquito nets.

     The project was spear headed by Jackie Stephens and Alize Beal both graduates of our kayaking camps, but lots of other kids got involved too. To raise money, the kids set up tables outside classrooms in their respective schools with signs and information about Soft Power Health and Malaria. Starting with donations as little as 30 cents, the kids raised the money and exceeded their original goal of $500 dollars. Much to their own surprise, the kids collected a total of $630. With this amount Soft Power Health can buy 105 mosquito nets, which can protect 315 people from getting malaria and be potentially life saving. It was a truly inspirational undertaking and just shows how a small effort can have a big impact!