Second-graders donate supplies to Paraguayan students
By Turner Walston
Published in News on February 14, 2006 1:52 PM
Some Rosewood Elementary students are thinking outside the lunchbox.
A group of second-graders at the school are studying South America this month and donating school supplies for Paraguayan students.
And they have even arranged for personal delivery.
On Friday, the students hosted Chief Master Sgt. Joyce Fromm and Tech Sgt. Tim Moreland, members of the 916th Medical Squadron. Next month, about 30 members of the squadron will travel to Paraguay to provide medical services to hundreds of people in villages where the nearest hospital might be hours away.
The squadron also will take along the donated school supplies.
The airmen showed the students a slide show of the medical mission the squadron performed in Panama in 2003. For two weeks, the squadron gave shots, performed examinations, pulled teeth and dispensed prescriptions.
The squadron saw 500 to 800 patients daily and wrote more than 16,000 prescriptions, Mrs. Fromm said.
"They don't know that there's anything different outside their village," she said of the children in the remote villages they serve in.
"We're hoping that we affect a few lives."
The students asked questions about the dirty water, the food sources and the books in the Panamanian schools.
"We keep telling them, we're blessed with how much we have," said Lori Smith, a teacher at the school. "I think this made it real to them."