Archive: Around Town

The Partnership of African and Lansing Schools (PALS) is organizing as Expand the Dream fundraiser for Friday June 16 at Lansing Middle School from 5 to 9 PM.

New classrooms constructed with Lansing donations

This event will include fun for the whole family, including a chicken barbecue, bake sale, and musical performances. Games and activities have been organized, including a bounce house, dunking booth, face painting, and a Lansing varsity women vs. men soccer game. Adults can enjoy an armchair massage, courtesy of Finger Lakes School of Massage. Ten Thousand Villages will sell African crafts. All proceeds from the fund raiser will go towards the construction of classrooms and safe latrines at the partner school in Kenya.


PALS is a partnership between the Lansing school district and two schools in Africa in which financial aid is coupled with personal, cultural, and educational connections. PALS works with the charitable organization Reach the Children and has identified Mbaka Oromo Primary School and Kuoyo Secondary School in western Kenya as the first partner schools. Forty percent of the students at Mbaka Oromo are orphans. Both schools have inadequate numbers of classrooms and teachers, only two safe latrines for 520 children, and insufficient supplies and furniture.

Over the last year, PALS community fund raisers have built two classrooms and provided high school scholarship to five orphans. The partnership of schools has also had an impact on Lansing students. Jim Nowak, a PALS member, who spent last fall in Kenya helping with classroom construction, gave student presentations about his experiences in Africa and a message of altruism. Lansing 7th grade students traded stories with Mbaka Oromo students about Life as a Teenin their countries. Lansing 5th grade students have traded information about the birds of our countries.

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