“I think of you every day, and I always dream of you. There is Eucerin for our hands, but not for our hearts. Maybe some day I will see you,” wrote a student from the Rulindo School in a letter to a Country Day correspondent.

French teacher Gerlinde Klauser first made contact with the Rulindo School in Rwanda in hopes of setting up a pen pal program for her students to practice their French with the native French speakers of the Rulindo School.

However, the program morphed into something much bigger than a French lesson.

The Helping Hands program, the official name of the partnership between the Rulindo School and Country Day, began in 2006.

Since then, students and faculty have raised $33,000 for the African school. Fundraisers are frequent, and just about every high-school student has contributed in one way or another.

Why was that money so necessary, and how has it been used?

After the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, poverty became a way of life for the Rulindo students.
The average Rwandan makes $30 per month—the cost of school materials and a uniform for one year. One year’s tuition is $200. Thus education in Rwanda is a rare privilege.

“Sixty-five students live in extreme poverty, and another 35 can afford only half of the tuition,” Klauser said.

Much of the money raised goes towards 55 scholarships for students. Other funds help Rulindo students purchase uniforms and food.

Recently, $250 was used to purchase 64 rabbits. To an SCDS student, this might seem like an excessive amount of household pets, but for the orphans in Rwanda, it means a uniform or school supplies.

The children sell the rabbits’ offspring, so people can either breed them and sell them again or use them for food. However, the students keep one of the offspring to donate to another poor student.

Because cholera, typhoid, hepatitis, polio and intestinal diseases can be contracted due to inadequate sanitation (according to the World Health Organization), improving the bathrooms is a big concern for the Rulindo school.

It would cost $9,000 to replace all the toilets, and the Rulindo School has replaced about half of them with donated funds (costing roughly $4,500).

Damaged windows were repaired as well, meaning students no longer had to study with rain and wind blowing.

A new water tap was built to provide students with clean, safe water. “Gift of Sacramento Country Day School” is engraved on the tap.

However, there is still much that needs to be done, according to Klauser.

Father Bernardin is planning a chicken project that will mimic the rabbit project.

A 100-year-old roof needs repairing after it partially collapsed during an earthquake. One classroom roof was already repaired, costing $2,500, but the school needs $22,500 to repair the remaining roofs.

“During the February (14, 2008) quake, the ceilings in the elementary school classrooms fell to the floor,” Klauser said.

“Luckily, the quake occurred on the weekend when the children were not in class. For awhile, classes took place outside in the rain for fear of aftershocks so as not to put human lives at risk.”

Improvements in pavement, bunk beds and other various facilities are also needed. An electrical generator, costing $10,000, will prevent electrical outages. And the students need computer equipment.

“There are only 10 computers for more than 400 students,” Klauser said.

“During Father Bernardin’s visit at Country Day, I took him to Office Depot and to Fry’s. He felt like a kid in a candy store. Generally speaking, computer equipment in Rwanda costs twice as much as in the U.S.”

Sports equipment (most sports balls cost $60), classroom supplies (40 cents for a notebook and 20 cents for a pen) and uniforms are always in short supply as well.

“I know some might think that we’ve helped them enough. Let’s help someone else who deserves help as well. But I think it is important that we stick with Rulindo,” junior Lauren Taylor, a member of the Helping Hands club, said.

“If we keep raising money for Rulindo and keep helping them in other ways, we will make a big difference.”

However, the partnership between Country Day and Rulindo is much more than a financial relationship.

“The students and people of Rulindo consider us their friends. There are two trees planted in front of the new Lower School building. In time, their tops will grow together,” Klauser said.

The Helping Hands committee has discussed plans that embody this sense of friendship, as opposed to focusing solely on financial aid.

Ideas include a trip to the Rulindo School. Inviting a student from Rulindo to attend Country Day for a year has also been discussed, as well as sending an SCDS teacher to Rwanda to teach English during the summer vacation.

The Rwandan government has recently switched the official language of the country from French to English. The school now needs to buy new books in English and retrain the teachers.
This has also hindered the school’s original pen pal program.

French teacher Richard Day’s students no longer write letters because he doesn’t know if the Rulindo students will be allowed to respond in French.

“I might have them write the letter in French and then copy it in English. That way it can be a learning experience for students on both ends,” Day said.

But because of the switch to English, any classes (beyond just French class) can have students write letters to promote communication between the schools.

This idea was experimented with when each high-school advisory wrote a letter to the Rulindo school in October.

“The personal contact shows them that they have friends outside Rwanda, that they are not forgotten nor abandoned—a sore point for all Rwandans who were, indeed, abandoned by the world community during the atrocities of the 1994 genocide,” Klauser said.