Honesdale Interact Club Stepping Up for Kids in Cameroon
(Honesdale, January 3, 2020)…When it comes to online communications, everybody wants lightning speed, but imagine waiting 40 minutes to connect to the internet. Would you even wait at all? “We grumble about our connectivity sometimes,” says Honesdale High School student Arjun Fulp, “but we have it made compared to the kids in Kumbo, Cameroon.” Fulp, president of the school’s Interact Club, rallied members to get behind a project to bring up-to-date computers and “connectivity” to the young people of this West African community. Almost a year into their campaign, the students, with help from the middle school Rotary club Early Act, have raised $11,000 and need $4,000 more to hit their goal. Arjun got the idea for the project after visiting a Kumbo community center and library built in part by Honesdale Rotary more than a decade ago. “I was really struck by how many kids crowded around the old computers. They really wanted to learn!” Arjun added that the computers not only took forever to boot up, “they were running Windows XP. That program out-dates even us, we didn’t know what it was!”
Interact club members have spent the past nine months presenting their project to 15 Rotary clubs in northeast Pennsylvania and at the Rotary District 7410 Conference in Scranton last April. Two fundraisers, a Yoga Night and Balls Away, also helped raise money and awareness.
Honesdale High School senior Miranda Fritz said the club is committed to raising the last of the funds necessary to complete the project. “We know we only have a few months before we graduate, but we started it and we are going to finish it. And we hope that with our community, and Rotarians around the district and around the world, we can pull together and make our goal a reality for the kids and families of Kumbo.” Honesdale Rotarian Lisa Champeau said her club was proud to support the project.
“When we hear about Africa in the news, it’s not always positive, but it’s a big continent with young people just like our kids yearning to learn and advance themselves in the world,” she said,
“Bravo to these Honesdale Interact students for wanting to give their counterparts in Africa the chance to expand their horizons and access something they enjoy here in the United States everyday—the internet.” Arjun said he initially went to Kumbo because Honesdale Rotary, the Himalayan Institute and Moka Origins, a sustainable-farm coffee company based in Honesdale have connections there, and he wanted to see if he could help in some way. “I found a way,” he said, “all we need to do now is make it happen.”
For more information about how you can help, contact Brian Fulp at 570-309-7860
Interactors with Hamlin Rotary, first row: Arjun Fulp, Danielle Eifert, Hannah
Holbert, Emma Dwyer and Joanne Firestone. Second row: Brian Fulp, Mary Ellen Bentler,
Tyler Simons, Terry Gunning, Eileen Talalas, Jen Wargo and Terri Ditty. Third row: Tatiana
Black, Bill Culley, Harry Talalas, Mark Michener, Laura Rowe and Marisa Romano
Youngsters in Cameroon, West Africa, gather around a shared computer. Honesdale High’s Interact Club is hoping to help buy more and better computers for them.
Kumbo Public Library supported by Honesdale Rotary