To Sally Tower, harambee meant throwing herself a party to celebrate her retirement from Buffalo schools after 34 years as a librarian, and collecting $2,000 in donations from guests to have a well built for villagers in Kotur, Kenya.

To elementary school children in the Buffalo suburb of Kenmore, harambee means holding bake sales, raffles and carnivals to raise funds that will buy books and supplies for pen pals in Kenya and help provide an education for older children whose families cannot afford the mandatory fees for them to attend school beyond the eighth grade.

To Mary Pietras, a teacher at Erie 1 BOCES, harambee means sponsoring three children from Kenya, giving them access to an education and the chance for a better life in a country where most families are forced to live on $1 or less a day.

If Michele Sprada has her way, harambee — or  "working together " — would become as familiar to Americans as safari, Kwanzaa and other common words and expressions from the Kiswahili language of East Africa.

Summers of service

Sprada, who teaches second grade at the Lindbergh School in Kenmore, has spent the past six summers with her aunt, volunteering in Kenya with the international humanitarian and environmental action group Future In Our Hands.

Working through FIOH, the two women have struggled to improve health care, living conditions and education in Kenya — setting up AIDS awareness programs, shipping in books for mobile school libraries, teaching English and math to child laborers looking to improve their lives and soliciting donations from like-minded friends and co-workers in and around Buffalo.

 "Although Kenya is an extremely poor country, its educational system has great potential with just a bit of our help, " said Sprada, a member of the Kenmore Teachers Association.

Until recently, however, the FIOH worldwide network did not include a U.S. chapter. With some volunteer help, this time from the law school at the State University of New York at Buffalo, FIOH-USA was incorporated late last year as a tax-exempt, non-profit organization run by a volunteer board headed by Sprada and her aunt, Sister Linda Glaeser, a Josephite nun.

The chapter's ambitious health and education program is producing tangible results. The well that Sally Tower helped finance is one of eight built with donations from western New York. A ninth will be coming soon, with the announcement that Mary Ricotta from Holmes Elementary in the Kenmore district is purchasing a new well for villagers in Kisumu.

To date, the generosity of people like Mary Pietras has helped FIOH educate 30 students.

The chapter newsletter, aptly named Harambee, carries a quote from Edmund Burke:  "Nobody makes a greater mistake than he who does nothing because he can only do a little. " It's a philosophy that guides the efforts of FIOH-USA.

For instance, a $350 contribution can sponsor a high school or college student in Kenya for a year. A $5 donation, Sprada points out, will buy a mosquito net that could save a child from malaria, which ranks with typhoid and cholera among the chief killers of children in Kenya.

Still other children suffer from Burkitts lymphoma, an otherwise rare type of cancer that is common in East Africa. Sprada, who has run educational programs for young cancer patients at a Russian-built hospital in Kisumu, has seen all too often how poverty can claim Kenyan children on the road to recovery.

After undergoing four months of chemotherapy at the provincial hospital, few of the children can afford to return for monthly follow-up treatments.  "If the cancer returns, it is almost always fatal, " Sprada said. 

Kenmore TA President Don Benker praised the work of the group and its co-founder.  "Michele is a prime example of our teachers who go far beyond the classroom without asking for any recognition, " said Benker, a member of NYSUT's Board of Directors.

The work of the western New York volunteers has raised more than money. It's also raised the awareness of Kenmore students about the struggles of children in other parts of the world, Sprada noted.

 "They value their textbooks, supplies, school lunch program and clean buildings as they have seen other places that do not have these luxuries, " Sprada said.  "They are learning that it is within their means to make a difference in others' lives although they themselves are only small children. "

— John Strachan