Oklahoma City boy, 11, raising funds for Kenya’s orphans
BY CHRIS SCHUTZ
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Published: November 8, 2009
Aurell Bloomer flashes a broad smile when he thinks of his friends in a little village in Kenya.
Then he smiles again when he thinks of when they get their new shoes later this year. Aurell, 11, a sixth-grader at Taft Middle School, has held several fund drives to help children at Maisha Orphanage, in Kisumu, Kenya, founded by his Oklahoma City friend, Beatrice Williamson. Earlier fund drives have helped build toilet facilities and a dining hall for the orphanage, which has room for about 22 children to stay until they get a foster home. The orphanage also runs a program that gives 200 children a meal a day, usually rice, beans, corn and other vegetables. Williamson, 32, said her native villagers are either very old or very young. "You rarely find people my age. They are all dead because of HIV/AIDS.” Williamson studies business at Oklahoma State University-Oklahoma City. Living in Oklahoma "gives me a platform to really give back to that community,” Williamson said. Aurell and Williamson’s latest goal is to send 5,000 pairs of shoes to the Maisha Orphanage and the nearby village, Williamson said. The shoes have been pledged by a local charity; it’s Aurell and Williamson’s job to raise the money to send them to Kenya. Aurell said his schoolmates have gotten caught up in the orphanage project. For the latest drive, there is a big jar for collecting coins at the principal’s office at Taft, and students are collecting donations in cardboard folders that hold quarters. So far, $980 has been raised, Williamson said. Aurell’s goal is to raise $8,000 — some will be used to send the shoes, and the rest will go to help the orphanage and a child he sponsors. The sixth-grader dreams of becoming a doctor and speaks confidently about his hopes to help the orphans. "I want them to be happy like I am,” said Aurell, who lives with his mother in an apartment in downtown Oklahoma City. His classmates can’t quite believe Aurell has been on two trips to visit a place in Africa, where some children get only one meal a day. He’s confident Americans can help. "We have a lot of stuff in America. We don’t use it,” he said.
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