Geneva seventh-grade students donate items for Afghan kids

On Sept. 14, Geneva Middle School South seventh-graders shipped seven large, flat-rate boxes full of writing and drawing supplies to the children of Afghanistan.

It took only three days for the 125 students in South’s 7 White team to amass hundreds of donated pencils, small pencil sharpeners, pens, and small notepads to ship to the Middle East.

Vicky Tusken, a seventh-grade language arts teacher at Geneva Middle School South, said the donations came in response to a call from a former Geneva Middle School student, Alex Meade, a Specialist in the U.S. Army currently serving in Afghanistan.

In a recent phone conversation, Spc. Meade told Tusken that when he and his fellow soldiers are on patrol, the Afghan children come out to greet and hang out with them.

The children always ask the soldiers for pens, pencils, and pieces of paper to write and draw with, he said, as most of the families are poor and do not have these items.

The items donated by the Geneva Middle School South students were shipped to Spc. Meade Sept. 14 and will arrive in Afghanistan in approximately three weeks.