Michelle Samartino | Special to The Michigan Catholic

WARREN — Attending a Catholic school helps Morgan Nichol realize how fortunate she is, and she wants to give back by helping other children receive a good education, too.

Morgan and approximately 30 other girls at Regina High School are part of Free the Children, an international organization focused on helping young people across the globe to receive a quality education.

Morgan, a junior, says it was through her sister (who graduated two years ago from Regina) that she learned about Free the Children.

“I wanted to learn how to help children who need help. This helps me to reach out. I can’t ignore the fact that people are suffering,” Morgan said.

As moderator since the program began at the school in 1998, Frances Berger supports, encourages, offers direction and conducts the meetings for the students involved in the organization.

“Our students wanted to save the lives of these children and to help them to attain a good education,” Berger said. “So, we tried to help with fundraisers and collecting school supplies.”

The group meets twice a month, in addition to conducting fundraising projects such as selling T-shirts and conducting bake sales to raise money for worthy causes, such as helping rebuild two hurricane-ravaged schools in the poor island nation of Haiti.

Initially, when the group was formed at Regina, the girls would collect school and medical supplies for the children, but that became cost-prohibitive due to shipping fees, Berger said. Nowadays, monetary gifts are sent instead.

“We want to make the world a better place. This helps them understand the fuller Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, to care about our fellow human beings,” Berger said. “Students become more aware of the world.”

Danielle Maus, a senior at Regina, has been a member since her freshmen year, and was already well aware of the group from her elementary school days at St. Joan of Arc School in St. Clair Shores. St. Joan of Arc and Regina are the only two schools in Michigan with a Free the Children group, according to Berger.

Free the Children “really gives you a perspective of what is going on in the world and those who need help,” Danielle said. As opposed to her days at St. Joan of Arc, at Regina, “we discuss deeper topics,” she added.

Katie Bieszke, a junior, likewise says she was interested in seeing what she could do to help, which drew her to the group. Being involved in Free the Children “helped me to learn to do more charity and to not take things for granted by reaching out to those who have less,” Katie said.

 

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Free the Children

For information about Regina’s fundraisers for Free the Children, call Frances Berger at (586) 585-0505.

Free The Children was founded in 1995 by a 12-year old-boy, Craig Kielburger, who had read about a young Pakistani boy, Iqbal Masih, who was assassinated for escaping the carpet cartel’s grip by speaking out against child labor.

Kielburger asked his parents whether he could find out what was going on in other countries, where children were living in poverty and exploitation. He was allowed to travel with a teacher and a guide overseas, where he found that children as young as 4 years old were not allowed to live with their families, but were forced to work to pay off debt. The children were enslaved, beaten, starved and humiliated for simple mistakes and were not allowed to go to school.

Kielburger then worked to found Free the Children, which would focus on freeing exploited children from bondage, finding them stable homes and building schools. At the same time, families in poverty were given spinning wheels to make clothes, goats for milk and cheese, hens for eggs, and many other items for food or clothing for their families and to start a business.

The group, headquartered in Toronto, continues to raise awareness about child labor and to encourage children to become involved in the issue.