World Cultures Class Holds a Coin Drop for Students in Darfur

Barbara Daniel’s goal for this month?

To get students to see what they can do to help people in Darfur.

Having taught world cultures and world history classes for many years at Ocean City High School, Daniel has always included genocide and poverty in Darfur in her lesson plans. The students have spent long hours putting together PowerPoint presentations, posters and even an extremely large map of Africa. A project that started last week will last for just about the whole month of March.

Students in the world cultures class will volunteer their time during classes to give speeches combined with PowerPoint presentations to educate other students, along with teachers.

The class was more than happy to help. In Darfur, more than 400,000 people have been killed, and 4.7 million people have been affected by the genocide. Daniel shows her class the movie Hotel Rwanda, because when it hit theaters, the United States began to focus on the crisis in Darfur.

“The post-Holocaust world said never again, so how can we overlook what is going on in Darfur?” she said. "Why should we help? Because we can."

In the class, students learn about the causes and groups involved in the genocide but also focus on the refugee children. A poster in the cafeteria reads, “You are poor, your parents are dead, you have no money and no place to live.”

The statement applies to all the displaced orphans that live in refugee camps. The children, having no money, do not go to school, they are not educated and they have no protection.

The class goes also teaches students how to advocate to help the refugees. Daniel’s class will create an enlarged map of Africa and place it in on the floor in the cafeteria of the high school. They are trying to cover the map entirely with coins.

This coin drop will continue through March 18. The class is encouraging fellow students to drop their leftover change on the map to a help good cause. For every $12 that is raised, one student in Darfur can get pencils, pens, notebooks, a backpack and other supplies to last them a year.

Class members say that for every $16, a man or woman can be educated to become a teacher; $28 buys a set of fourth-grade textbooks to be shared by every two students, and $50 can get uniforms and soccer balls for a boys' soccer team. All of the money raised will go to Darfur Education Project. Anyone outside the school can donate by clicking the link.