St. Martin’s students prepare to pack education kits.

Children from all Grades at St. Martin’s School, Thunder Bay, helped provide 245 education kits for disadvantaged students and teachers in Malawi and Haiti through Project Love. Students in Grades 4, 5 and 6 filled plastic bags donated by Zellers with pencils, rulers, erasers, pencil sharpeners, pens and notebooks this afternoon. English kits were assembled for Malawi; French kits for Haiti.

“The people at Lowery’s were great,” says teacher Patrick Klug, the chief organizer of Project Love at St. Martin’s. “They sold us $2,000 worth of stationery for $200 and gave us the pencil sharpeners for free.”

Money to purchase the kits came from the students who were asked to donate $3 each.

Adult volunteers from the community, most of them retirees, helped at the event as well.

The annual project is in its twelfth year. This is the first year that Haiti has benefited from the event.

— story and picture by Tom Scura