It was 18 months ago that 10-year-old Conner Macdonald caught a TV show about a six-year-old boy called Ryan who made it his lifes work to help build wells in Africa.
After discovering that sick Ugandan families would walk for hours to get a drink of dirty water, Conner, a Grade 5 student at the time, felt compelled to help the Ryans Well Foundation in some way.
He started by saving Christmas money from relatives in 2011, then it was his birthday money and other meagre sources of income that a 10-year-old could muster all with the goal of hitting a $2,000-target some point down the line.
Realizing it wasnt an overnight compulsion, it wasnt long before friends and family began to take Conner, now 11, seriously and dad Angus helped him set up a bank account for the fundraising.
And last year, when his classmates and teacher at St. Pauls Catholic School found out, the ball really started to roll when they all put a shoulder to the wheel and organized a bake sale, raising $440.
His teacher was so inspired that she put in another $100 herself, said his proud dad, who added Conners instincts to lead and to help stem from watching his big brother Jordan, who was a Cops for Cancer junior captain at age six.
Hes now up over $1,000 and weve been in touch with Ryans Well to ask them how we can work together and help even more.
After talking with them, the target for Conner and his class is now $5,000, double what we originally were going to raise.
The reason, said Macdonald, for the higher target is that the project will be earmarked as a personal project, rather than one under an umbrella of world-wide fundraising.
This way, the kids will feel an attachment to a particular village and to its people, especially the children who will drink from the well.
Its a wonderful feeling knowing that these school children, led by my son Conner, are learning a valuable lesson that their world is much larger than what they perceive and that they, even as children, can make a difference and teach us all a lesson.
Macdonald even contacted a local realtor, Izabela Wasiela, who hed read about in the News after she and Kanya Deutsch spent two weeks in Livingstone, Zambia volunteering with the Happy Africa Foundation.
Conners dad thought the womens efforts teaching special needs children and caring for young children in an afterschool program would be great for the students to hear and urged Wasiela to talk to them.
I was only too happy to go see them, said Wasiela, who also chipped $100 into the classs Ryans Well pot. It took me to age 31 before I did something like this and these children are doing it already, theyre amazing and it was a very rewarding experience for me.
The children are organizing another fundraiser soon and hope to hit their target before the end of 2013.
If you would like to help Conner, log onto www.ryanswell.ca/donate and mention Conners name as the reason for donating.
