4-H club is helping hospitals in Africa
Chattering children and teens filled the lobby of McLeansville's post office Tuesday afternoon.
The members of the Northeast McLeansville 4-H Club gathered there to ship off about 40 boxes of much-needed empty prescription bottles to hospitals in Kenya. The club has sent the bottles for about 20 years, but this shipment was one of the biggest. Collecting the bottles was the easy part; raising the money for postage took a lot more time.
The club spent $2,426 on shipping.
The club used donations to pay for the shipments, as well as money that 4-H members raised by selling plants and other activities.
For months, Mireya Garcia, 14, collected and crushed aluminum cans to raise money for the postage.
"It's kind of amazing," said 7-year-old Sophie Nemrov of the project. "We're sending them to a far country."
The club sent the bottles to Quaker mission hospitals in Tiriki and Webuye. There are no factories making the small plastic bottles in Kenya, so hospitals have to pay to have them imported, said Carolyn Ivey, volunteer leader of the local 4-H club. "If they use money to import the bottles, they have less for the medication," Ivey said.
The club has sent the bottles to Haiti and Mongolia in past years, as well. "I think it's pretty cool," said 15-year-old Talor Brown. "We help others in other countries simply by saving medicine bottles."
This is just one of many service projects the club does, Ivey said. "Hopefully, they learn compassion for other people ... I think it helps them to learn to appreciate what we have in the United States."
Contact Jamie Kennedy Jones at jkennedy@news-record.com or 449-4610.
