Young Bartlett teacher reaches out to kids in Africa

Andy Bauer has visions of a changed world: one with less poverty and violence, with better schools and living conditions for all. But he's not sitting around, hoping it just someday occurs.

At age 23, he's working to make change happen now.

Along with two friends, Bauer, an elementary schoolteacher from Bartlett, has founded a nonprofit called Pangea Educational Development, which works to empower students and unify communities by building schools in underprivileged areas.

Bauer was a senior at Bartlett High School when an activist spoke to his class about genocide in Rwanda. It hit a nerve. There was a bigger world out there — and he needed to find out what kind of impact he could have.

“I just felt really compelled to do something,” he recalled. “I'd never seen the world for myself. I wanted to be somewhere where I could see myself as me.”

Through the speaker, he had soon signed up for a service trip to Africa — to the shock of his parents.

“I was, quite honestly, scared to death,” recalled his mom, Ellen Murphy.

But Bauer was determined to go, and the two-and-a-half-week trip to Rwanda, where he helped deliver basic medical supplies and work toward making family businesses self-sustainable, changed his life.

“It's hard to describe,” Bauer said. “You get to see that maybe having all these physical things doesn't matter when only your loved ones are around. There's a sadness — these people are literally wondering where their next meal is. But they also have passion and fire, and they're smiling and hugging and thanking you.”

Since then, his passion to help has only continued to grow. As a college junior, he returned to Africa for a service trip to Uganda, along with his dad. It was the first time he'd ever seen his dad cry.

After growing disappointed with some of the internal politics of the organizations with which he'd been working, Bauer decided to plan his own service trip. He worked for a year and a half, establishing contacts, recruiting volunteers and organizing fundraisers.

In June 2010, a year after graduating from Illinois State University, he returned to Uganda. His teams, which included family members and friends, helped create a plan of sustainable income for one school and complete projects, such as buying textbooks and installing playground equipment, for another.

It was on that trip that he met DePaul University students Drew Edwards, from Rochester, Mich., and Kevin Oh, of Palatine. Bonding over less-than-ideal volunteer experiences and similar educational ideologies during the long bus rides across country, the three envisioned creating a nonprofit. They saw that the schools they visited lacked resources and opportunities, but not enthusiasm. The idea that education could provide unity and empowerment, and that schools could become self-sustainable given the right tools, became the basis behind the formation of Pangea.

“We just decided, ‘Why can't we be that beacon for young people to get involved?'” Bauer said. “Why can't we be role models for people our own age?”

Bauer's involvement didn't surprise his mother, who says his compassion and dogged determination have always stood out. In middle school, he befriended a disabled boy, and in high school, he gave up his lunch hour to be a teacher's aide in a self-contained classroom.

“Andy's the most passionate person I've ever met,” said Oh, an education major. “You can see this is his dream. You see it in his eyes and hear it in his words.”

From organizing the to-do list to keeping people on task and staying up-to-date on educational reform trends, “everything in his life revolves around his passion for education.”

Once home, the trio got to work, spending every free moment and dollar to making their dream a reality. They ironed out the vision, created programs and fundraisers, worked with a lawyer to get a nonprofit status and had an official launch party in May.

“What makes Pangea different is our focus on the volunteer experience,” Oh said. “It's a really personal organization, and we focus on how it's going to impact you as the volunteer, which in turn will impact the schools and students we want to help.”

Armed with a board of eight young people, a network of nearly 70 supporters, including students at several college campuses, and a better-looking website than many nonprofits, the group is working toward planning its next trips to Uganda.

“On a deeper level, people can really see the passion in our eyes and in our mission,” Oh said. “It's taken a lot of sacrifice. But this is our dream.”

And the results make the sacrifice worthwhile. Bauer recalls one conversation he had with a group of women who had been raped by rebel soldiers. If they could have one thing in the world, they said, it would be an education. He also recalls the moment his group surprised a school with playground equipment.

“Just hearing the roar from all the teachers and students — and then they began to cry,” he said. “It was one of those moments that makes everything worth it.”

Yet he considers himself the lucky one. “I wake up every day,” he said, “and can't believe I get to do this.”

Visit www.pangea.education.org to get involved.