By BRIDGET COOK
LYNDHURST Secondary College students learnt some valuable life lessons and just how lucky they are when they had a special visitor this week.
Maria Strintzos, from the Relief Society of Tigray Ethiopia, visited the school on Monday to talk to the Year 8 students about the Hawzien Orphan Community Project.
English teacher Melissa Belias said they invited Ms Strintzos in to address the students as part of their studies on global responsibility.
“We have been reading the book, The Heaven Shop by Deborah Ellis which tells the story of an AIDS orphan in Malawi, Africa,” she said.
“We do this as a means of teaching our students about global issues and for our students to learn about how other children around the world live in comparison to themselves,” she said.
Ms Belias said the guest speaker spoke to the students about the project with orphans in Hawzien, a region in Tigray.
“There are 58 orphans which she supports – roughly 60 per cent girls, 80 per cent from rural areas and aged between 6 and 17 years old.
“All are double parent orphans and many are AIDS affected.
“We hope our students got a better understanding of life for some children in parts of Africa as they heard from someone who has been there and witnessed firsthand the effects AIDS has on these children and their communities.
“As a school, we choose to teach this unit to our students as we feel it’s important for them to learn about the wider world and for them to get a greater understanding of the difficulties that many children their age face across the world.”
