The quality of education offered at Lake Forest Academy (LFA) is something that the LFA community takes a lot of pride in and students use to their full advantage to keep them on the right track to assuring them a promising future. Sadly, not everyone around the world has access to the kind of education offered at the Academy. Sophie Waimon, a sophomore this year, saw the contrast between the education she receives at the Academy and Yakini School, a school in Arusha, Tanzania she visited over the summer.

Waimon does volunteering projects over the summer through the program, Overland, which partners with an orphanage, Living Water Children’s Center. This orphanage partners with Yakini School, which was how Waimon got to work with the orphans at that school. Waimon was so touched by her culturally immersive and heart-warming experience in Tanzania that she wanted to give LFA students the opportunity to learn more about the Tanzanian culture and people through charity work for Yakini School.

Waimon is not new to doing charity work at schools across the globe as she has traveled to Costa Rica to volunteer at schools through Overland. This past summer trip to Tanzania, Waimon got to not only help the children she worked with, but learn a thing or two about their culture.

“I really loved this because we were totally immersed in what we were doing, whether it was like the culture of the kids in the school even the more native people like the Maasai, which attracted me to this trip,” noted Waimon.

She loved the orphans in Tanzania because they were happy to see her, wanted to play with her and talk to her.

“It doesn’t matter what background they came from, they just want to be happy,” said Waimon.

Waimon also got to improve her Swahili, which is the official language alongside English in Tanzania.

Waimon chose to start this project at LFA because she knows how open to diversity and how generously giving the LFA community is to those less fortunate. She wants to share the same joy she gained from opening herself up to a new culture, to the rest of the LFA community, and hopes to have members of the club keeping in contact with the students at Yakini School. Waimon and her family were so touched by the personal stories of the students that they are currently sponsoring a boy who injured his legs and has no guardians. The club is a way for her to continue giving back.

“My major goal is to raise money through a fundraiser or two throughout the year to provide uniforms and shoes for them, and then my second goal is to show people the culture that I learned in Tanzania and help them be able to connect to the kids as I was,” stated Waimon.