ECCO echoes
Making a difference
throughout
Mt Pleasant East Cooper Community Outreach gives back to stop poverty
Nathan Russell
Lettie Lundy // photo
staff writer
Sophomore Maryam Jafri holds the picture that inspired her to start the reach out and help others by forming the Reach Club.
Junior starts Reach Club to raise awareness for Syrian Refugees after seeing a disturbing photo
So at the start of this year, Jafri came up with an idea and approached a teacher, asking if it was possible. “She wanted to start a club for children of the refugee crisis,” advisor Estefania Cunha said, “...to help them and get students interested in the growing issue.” Jafri got right to work in starting the Reach Club. Its main goal? To bring awareness and raise money for the Syrian Refugee children involved in the crisis in the Middle East. Abby Vorhees “I did it because, as most people know, it is a growing problem. It’s clearly all over the news, and some people are dosports editor ing things to help, but I don’t think students here realize what we can do,” Jafri said. “Since we’re in a school of 4,000 people, A little boy sits in the back of an ambulance. His face, still we could make a real difference. And that’s what I’m trying to round with baby fat, shows telling signs of a recent bombing. do.” Crusted blood, ash and soot mix and swirl together. Blood Jafri and the members of the circles his eye and drips down his left cheek, Reach Club are working to raise money replacing the tears shock has stolen from throughout this school year by selling him. among other forming ideas. At But it’s his expression that has captured “We’re all complaining about bracelets the end of the year, the club will hold a the attention of the world. It’s his expression that captured the athow tired we are after school banquet in which all of the proceeds will to the UNICEF organization for Syrian tention of Maryam Jafri. when all they want is to have go Refugees, Jafri said. “I’m a Muslim, so I’ve known about the a house and their family back Jafri sees what others don’t. Just bewars and everything else going on since the cause these aren’t American children, just beginning. Last year, I wanted to start a club or even the littlest chance because it is in Syria, doesn’t mean there to raise money for children, but I wasn’t sure that they can even have a can’t be an American voice for them. what group to start it for,” Jafri said. “But “I just really want to help in any way then I saw a picture of this little boy in an school,” I can… I want to raise money for this ambulance over there and decided that I have because it is a topic that people are very to do something.” controversial on, while some seem to Anything.
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Maryam Jafri
really glaze over it,” Jafri said. “It seems like if it was any other group of children, people would jump on it. But they aren’t going to, because it’s in Syria and there are people in this world who legitimately don’t care.” But Jafri does care. “She and the club bring awareness to what is going on. That was a big problem -- people were not aware of this or how it began. But they came in and Maryam had all of these powerpoints ready to go and explained what happened and how it all started. It was good for the students to learn from her because they do not necessarily read the news or seek it themselves,” Cunha said. “Maryam is extremely giving and is very aware of what is going on in the world, especially in that area… They really look up to her. They want to follow her lead.” Jafri wants people, at the very least, to be aware that something of this magnitude is happening to people just like Americans, to children just like their own, simply in another place. “We’re all complaining about how tired we are after school when all they want is to have a house and their family back or even the littlest chance that they can even have a school,” Jafri said. She wants people to acknowledge that this is a real problem, and if the student body looks outside of themselves, something can be done about it. “People should know that not all Syrians are bad. Not all Muslims are bad. All they want is to just live a normal life. They never asked for any of this,” Jafri said. “That’s why I’m starting this club, to bring awareness to it. We can send them money and food and supplies. They need it. And we can do something.”
Twenty tons, that’s the amount of food given out to the part of the Mount Pleasant community that is below the poverty line yearly by ECCO [East Cooper Community Outreach]. Eight percent of the Mt. Pleasant population live below the poverty line, according to the US census. This isn’t what you expect from a $73,000 median income town. “A lot of people think of Mount Pleasant and Charleston having so much wealth when in reality we are incredibly impoverished,” said Meg Williams, Development and Marketing Coordinator for ECCO. ECCO was started 27 years ago after Hurricane Hugo hit South Carolina. “Christ Our King Catholic Church came forth because their Pastor Monsignor Carter saw the need in the community and got his church to bring things,” Jack Little, the Executive director of ECCO said. “Two weeks later he said ‘let’s talk about getting other churches together to support this.’” Since then, the group has evolved since then into a not for profit community based organization that has made an impact on the community. This group would later be known as ECCO. While they
were helping the community recover from Hurricane Hugo they figured out how many people in the Mount Pleasant area were stuck in the cycle of generational poverty, Williams said. One of ECCO’s goals is giving people a foot hold to be able to pull themselves out of the cycle of poverty. One ECCO client interviewed on the telephone said “it (ECCO) help my community real good and it helps me real good. It does good for me”, ECCO offers a many benefits, including free dental care, a free health clinic, a food pantry, a clothing closet, and job readiness programs. These “safety net services” can help families create a better future for themselves. With food alone, ECCO serves over 3,600 families every year. Every year, ECCO has special programs that allow families in and around Mount Pleasant to celebrate holidays. Their program provides a frozen turkey with all the additional canned vegetables and fruit and stuffing and dessert any one would want on their holiday table. Regular clients coming to ECCO during October and the first half of November for their regular food order also get their Thanksgiving dinner order. Many ECCO families who take home a turkey wouldn’t otherwise be able to afford to have a traditional Thanksgiving dinner, Little said. ECCO is only able to keeps the organization running with the help of their 250 volunteers. “Over 70,000 dollars worth of volunteer hours that our volunteers work instead of us having employees being paid (a month),” Williams said. Volunteers fulfill many jobs at ECCO, such as taking food orders, bagging food orders and keeping the shelves in the food warehouse full, and working in the clothing closet to name a few of the many volunteer jobs. Volunteer sorts through clothes donated by citizens in Charleston.
Lucy Johnson // photo
Lucy Johnson // photo
Doing their part Students are going out of their way to give back to the community by showing acts of service. Read more about these acts of thanks on www.tribaltribune.org A bike for everyone
As math teacher Kristy Varvaro was scrolling through her Facebook news feed, she came across a GoFundMe page raising money for students at another school and wasted no time brainstorming ways in which Wando could contribute. “Every kid deserves to have a bicycle at Christmas,” she said. The GoFundMe page was started by a girl named Katie Blomqiust, a teacher at Pepper Hill Elementary School, with the goal of raising over $65,000 in order to provide all 650 kids of the school with bicycles, helmets and locks, Varvaro said. Pepper Hill Elementary is a small school in North Charleston, totaling about 650 kids. Katie Blomquist, a first grade teacher at the school, wanted to give every one of those children a bicycle as a Christmas gift this year. In an attempt to help, Varvaro collected donations of a dollar or more for two days in exchange for the chance to wear jeans to school Oct. 27. “...In the end we were able to raise $647, which on average, they spend about $100 per student so Wando staff was able to successfully buy six students a bicycle, helmet and lock,” she said. -- Lexa Garian
Having a heart for children
From cutting, pasting and coloring to playing Halo and Mario Kart, senior Kira Tabor does just about anything with children at the Medical University of South Carolina to help cheer them up. Tabor volunteers in the Children’s Hospital’s H-Room, a sprawling room of fun with floor-to-ceiling windows and copious amounts of toys, where she focuses on bringing childhood back to patients confined to the Hospital. “One time I sat for two hours and held a baby. I had a little rattle and played with her,” Tabor said, “I’ve played video games for like two hours with a 12-year-old boy.” “Its really fun with the older kids,” she added, “There was this one girl who was 16, she was really sad to be by herself, but when I came in, we didn’t have to do anything. We just talked normal teenage girl talk for two hours. She told me all about her makeup and how she’s good at doing makeup. You could really see her become really happy just to have someone the same age to talk to.” -- Grace Lady
Working for the environment
After Hurricane Matthew, senior Ethan Kopfman was inspired to pick up trash on Crab Bank Island, a local seabird sanctuary, to help the birds and make sure they are able to live in a safe and healthy home. “I found out about the cleanup from a poster that was put up at my job [Nature Adventures Outfitters],” Kopfman said. “After learning about the environment and different species that live in our area all summer from my co-workers, I wanted to be able to cleanup an island that’s usually overlooked to help out birds that are on their way south.” With his co-workers and 12 other volunteers, he kayaked to the island to start their cleanup on Oct. 16. “[It was] my first time doing a beach sweep like that, but cleanups are usually done in the fall and spring before and after a large number of birds stop there and their mating season begins,” Kopfman said. -- Natalie Confer
nov. 9, 2016
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