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Victoria senior invites public for fundraiser walk for Kenyan school

Funds to benefit Soweto Junior School, which can feed one child for a month for $8
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Sabine Laubental (bottom left) has been a frequent donor to Soweto Junior School for over 10 years. (Support Soweto Junior School)

Editor’s note: This previously published story contains new information.

A walk with Victoria resident Sabine Laubental from Clover Point to Harrison Pond on Dallas Road and back on Sunday (Aug. 8) will go much further than the five kilometres.

Laubental, a legally blind senior who walks with assistance from her guide dog, Stella, invites the public to join her at Clover Point starting at 11 a.m. for the Walk to Feed Soweto School, to raise awareness and funds for a facility in impoverished Kenya.

Donations collected in the fundraiser will go towards the Soweto Junior School’s meal program. Laubental became a friend to the school following a decade of work with non-profit society Positively Africa.

She said $8 can feed one student daily for a month. “For many of the children, the school meal is their only food for the day.”

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Soweto Junior School is in the Kibera slum of the capital, Nairobi, and has 300 students under the age of nine. Some are orphaned or were born with HIV, according to local charity Support Soweto Junior School.

“It’s not easy to study on an empty stomach,” school principal Jeff Juma said in a video to the group. Although the school aims to provide at least two meals of rice and beans daily, that is sometimes reduced to one due to funding shortages.

The school is also raising money to upgrade its kitchen which, since opening in 2006, has relied on an open fire, which creates a smoke hazard for students and staff alike.

Donations can be made online at supportsowetojuniorschool.org/donate.

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