COMMUNITY

Your UP WITH KIDS! Directors are very excited to announce our new service project for the Mermaid/Pirates year! Remember, participation in this project is completely optional! This is how it all happened:

To create a Caribbean flavor for our show this year, we purchased a number of djembe drums for our musical numbers like “Matilda,” “Day-O” and “Yellow Bird.” We purchased the drums from Andy Jones at Djembe Direct: www.djembedirect.com. When we went to pick up our drums, we saw some great pictures of the people who made our drums in their village in Ghana, West Africa.

We asked Andy if there was anything we could do for them. He told us about the Koforidua Unit School for the Deaf that is trying to get enough money to hire a teacher who is trained in American Sign Language to teach their students. If we can earn $3000 for this school, they can hire a teacher and their little students can learn to communicate in the same sign language that we use to make our finale song beautiful!

THE CHALLENGE:

Donate $1 to the Ghana Deaf School Project.

UP WITH KIDS! will match $1 per student.

100% of the money we raise will be donated to the deaf school!

To learn more about our project, go to the Djembe Direct website: www.djembedirect.com and click on the links under Get Involved- Help in Africa! and the Africa Heartwood Project. You’ll see some great pictures of our drum-building friends!