Over the last few years, Milton Academy’s World Health Organization (W.H.O.) has organized activities and fund raising campaigns to raise money and awareness for refugees affected by humanitarian crisis. At the end of 2009, co-chairs Nia Patton (I) and Samantha Noh (II) presented a check totaling $6,000 to Mapendo International, a non-profit organization protecting and caring for at-risk and forgotten refugees in Africa.
In a letter to Nia and Samantha, Mapendo’s founder and executive director, Sasha Chanoff, stated that the organization plans to use the donation for a rescue operation aimed at reuniting five children from the Congo with their family here in the United States.
“Jean Jacques and his wife, Rose, were separated from their seven children during violence and persecution in the Congo,” wrote Mr. Chanoff. “They ended up in Vermont and began searching for their children. Last year, we brought two of the youngest children to the US (photo above is of that reunion), but violence and threats forced the other five to flee into the interior of the country. Now we are helping those five children to escape from the Congo.”
Founded in 2005 by Christy Hong ’08, Milton’s W.H.O. shares the same objectives as the World Health Organization of the United Nations.
