Partnership Celebration features Jamboree
The Partnership of African and Lansing Schools (PALS) hosted its 3rd annual Partnership Celebration at Lansing High School and Lansing Middle School. The first part of the celebration, Jambo Jamboree, was at Lansing High School gym and cafeteria. Family fun included a bounce house, Sumo wrestling, bungee run game, dance-dance-revolution competition, Kenyan games, Kenyan arts and crafts, face painting, pizza and baked goods.
The ROCK to READ concert, headlined by the Sim Redmond Band, was held in the Lansing Middle School Auditorium. The concert featured the bands Final Call and Microwave This. Proceeds from both events benefits the construction and outfitting of a library at a partner school in Kenya. PALS is a partnership between the Lansing school district and Mbaka Oromo primary school in Kenya in which financial aid is coupled with personal, cultural and educational connections. PALS works with the charitable organization Reach the Children to direct its work in Kenya. Over the past few years, PALS community fundraisers have built classrooms, latrines and a kitchen and provided furniture, shoes, musical instruments and supplies and also given four-year high school scholarships to five orphans.
The partnership of schools has also had an impact on Lansing students. Students in grades 2 through 10 have had presentations in their classrooms by Kenyans and by Americans who work in Kenya. Through pen-pal correspondences, pictures and periodic updates from teachers in Kenya, the Lansing children have learned about the lives of the children of Mbaka Oromo and the difference that their contributions make for these Kenyan children. The PALS program has been a rich lesson of altruism and global connectedness that is a source pride and pleasure to the students and staff of Lansing.