Children's plight in India moves 8th graders to action

Students in Peggy Biernat's second-hour social studies class are out to lick child labor in India, one lollipop at a time. The Chippewa Middle School students raised $2,500, selling candy canes and lollipops, and they secured a matching grant to help support a charity that offers former laborers schooling and medical care.

Last fall, the students watched a CNN Student News segment about 10-year-old bonded laborers working 16-hour days embellishing T-shirts for the Gap.

"They got up out of their seats and said, 'What can we do for these kids?'" Biernat recalled.

Biernat and colleague Nancy Kaiser at the school in North Oaks saw an opportunity for service learning. So the whole eighth grade started learning about children sold into slavery and about conditions for kids in India.

The students took their newfound knowledge to every class in the building, tailoring the presentation to the age of the audience, and formed an organization incorporating the school's mascot, the Chargers: Charging Against Bonded Labor, or CABL.

They bought two sizes of candy canes at cost from Fritzie Fresh in Newport, which they sold to their classmates for 50 cents and a dollar during lunchtimes and before and after school. For Valentine's Day, they sold heart-shaped lollipops. The Gap, which has broken off ties with the offending Indian manufacturer, offered matching funds up to $2,500 and a connection to the charity called Give Life to Orphans and Needy Children in India.

Each $200 the students raise sets up a child with housing and education for a year.

Kaiser and Biernat stressed that the campaign was student-driven. Students did the marketing, sales and purchasing, and the whole school seems invested in the project. Students from different classes and different grades have been asking, "Have we met our goal yet?" Biernat said. "It's not, 'Have you met your goal?'"

And the core CABL group, that second-hour class, is energized by its success.

"We feel really good," said student Ben Schullo, 14, of Shoreview. "We can help 25 kids through a year of schooling, and maybe more. ... It was a lot easier than it seemed and even though it's easy it makes a big difference."

Even though the students have reached their matching-grant goal, the campaign will continue. They've still got a box of lollipops worth $200, and they're looking for a fundraising tool for April.

"Yesterday, they were talking," Kaiser said, "and saying, can we do this next year?"

Maria Elena Baca • 612-673-4409