High School students in Florida send science textbooks with medical supplies

Uganda students Today, some of us sorted through the supplies and equipment CardioStart shipped to Mulago Hospital a few months ago. Among the shipment was four large boxes packed with Uganda Outreach science textbooks given by Dan Carella, a high school science teacher, and some of his students in Florida. In fact, Dan and some of students helped pack the 40-foot container at the CardioStart office in Tampa. I was asked to help find a local school that would like these great books. The catch? The local school and the school in Florida had never made contact with each other! I inventoried the books to find a wide assortment of Physical Science, Physics, Chemistry and Biology books.

Apparently, these books are very expensive in Uganda and hard to come by.  I asked at the nurses station – a really fabulous group of Ugandan women – to see if they had a suggestion for a secondary school to receive the books. Immediately they told me about the nearby Kitante Hill School, which one of the nurses’ children attends. They promptly got a driver to help me deliver the books. Patrick, who was helping me load the books, mentioned that his son LOVES physics and he wondered if he could have a book. Given that the books were meant to go to a student who would love them, I said, yes.

Uganda teachers We drove over to the school, a public school not boarding, but still costing about $300/year and I met the head mistress, a fabulous woman. She was exceedingly grateful to receive these books and said that it was a very lovely gift on a really tough day. She said that we sometimes forget that we have to give. It’s not all about me. And the more people learn this the better the world will be. “I consider myself God’s helper. A teacher. I know that if the students have their heart in the right place, to take care of nature, their family, their town, then things will get better. My key theme is respect. No matter where you come from. Peace education is respect for every little thing.”

And so I was the lucky one to connect a gift of books from Dan Carella’s Lecanot High School AP class.