Making a difference...one footstep at a time

By NOREEN HYSLOP

Managing Editor

Katie Reiker, a senior at Dexter High School, knows well the mission work of Project HOPE. Along with a host of other teens and adults from the area, she witnessed first hand their work in the poverty stricken are of Managua, Nicaragua while on a mission trip there in the summer of 2014. This holiday season, she played a role in helping some of the children she met while on that trip by involving some local children and at the same time teaching them a valuable lesson in giving -- especially important during this holiday season.

Katie's mother is Tania Reiker, a veteran teacher of the Early Childhood Special Education classroom at Southwest Elementary School in Dexter. Her students have special needs themselves, but not the physical needs that were witnessed by Katie while in Managua.

"There are children who do not even have shoes to wear, and they must have shoes and a uniform in order to attend school. So, those children are really looked down upon for through no fault of their own," Katie explains. "It's a big deal for the children in Managua to have a pair of shoes."

Katie has some spare time in her high school schedule this year, and she spends much of that time assisting in her mother's classroom. She shares the gift with her mother of being a "natural" when working with young children, often reading stories to them, always with one or two on her lap, and playing interactive games.

In the late fall, Katie shared photographs from her mission trip with her mother's students. When one of the students noticed that some of the children in the photos had no shoes, he asked why that was, and Katie explained that the children she worked with in Nicaragua didn't have all the things they needed like most children they knew. Shoes, for some children, are considered a luxury item.

The interest further sparked Katie to provide them with an opportunity to help the children they will only ever know in photographs. She began a shoe drive in the classroom of her mother's, sending notes home explaining the plight of Project HOPE and asking for anyone who wished to help to donate a pair of shoes.

"We read the story, 'The Shoemaker and the Elves' to the students before we introduced the idea," the veteran teacher explains. "So, there was a little bit of a magical sense to the project, too."

Longtime Dexter resident, Pam Jolliff, has headed up the local efforts toward assisting children and building projects in Nicaragua for many years. She keeps an ongoing supply of donated shoes and ships them each year to the villages in need. Katie explained to the children in her mother's classroom that the shoes they donated would eventually be on the feet of children who needed them.

"They could really relate to the situation, having seen the pictures and having heard the stories from Katie," Tania Reiker explains. "It really meant something for them to come to school with a pair of shoes in their backpack or in a box, knowing that they were going to help a child far from Dexter.

At the end of the project, 14 pairs of new or slightly worn shoes were added to Jolliff's collection, to be shipped to those in need.

"It's been a good lesson," Tania notes, "and one that will make life better for several children in need."

Project HOPE was established in 1966. In 2006, HOPE began The Village Health Banks program in Managua. The program provided health education and micro-lending training to women while also educating families on domestic violence and women's rights. The program reached over 7,000 children and 1,800 women with education and also improved women's access to legal resources and referrals for counseling and other related services.

More recently, Project HOPE launched a program in collaboration with Ministry of Health of Nicaragua to vaccinate senior citizens and people with chronic diseases against pneumococcal disease. Over one million doses of vaccines have been provided by a Project HOPE partner to vaccinate Nicaraguans.

HOPE has also assisted the people of Nicaragua with humanitarian relief efforts. Since 2007, HOPE medical volunteers from the around the United States have participated in the U.S. Navy's Continuing Promise humanitarian mission, joining their military counterparts to provide medical care and health education to the people of Nicaragua.