Rockville Centre students transform trash into treasure

The members of the Student Government at Wilson Elementary School and the second graders at Hewitt Elementary School took their used schools supplies and turned them into treasures. They collected the used supplies from each class and donated more than 200 pounds of pencils, crayons, markers, erasers, glue sticks, construction paper, lined paper and marble notebooks to the H.E.L.P. Primary School in Masese, Uganda.

Rockville Centre residents Peter Garrity, Robert Silon and Corryn Silon travelled to Masese in July with their suitcases filled with the school supplies donated from the students at Wilson and Hewitt Schools.

The H.E.L.P. Primary School opened four years ago through the efforts of the Garrity and Silon families with H.E.L.P. International. Masese is a small village in eastern Uganda comprised of refugees, where generations of children did not receive an education and many could not afford to send their children to school or feed them more than once every third day. The H.E.L.P. Primary School began four years ago with 40 students and one teacher. Today the school enrolls 450 students with 12 teachers and has become a focal point of the community. Additionally, with the school’s breakfast and lunch program, all students get a nutritious meal twice a day.