“Distance means so little when friendship means so much.”
Within recents months, our students at Agape House have found this quote to be true in new and exciting ways. With the implementation of our new pen pal program, the students of the standard 8 class have had the opportunity to potentially build life long friendships with fellow students in America.
Agape Scholars has taken on a partnership with The Simple Room, a nonprofit organization that seeks to transform youth by “facilitating Christ-centered programming for spiritual, physical, mental, and social development in efforts to empower youth to positively engage their community.”
This program has several benefits to both group of students including:
increased cultural awareness
encouragement/support through friendship
something to look forward to- an incentive to continue the program
practice in expressing themselves in words
increased English skills
This program, although in its trial stage, is going far better than we could have imagined. Both students eagerly await to hear from their new friend each week. To be more efficient, students write their letters by hand and are scanned and sent via email. That way, there is still an authenticity to the letters, without the cost or time.
Through this program, we have seen both students offer unbelievable encouragement and support to one another. We hope that this program will be able to extend to more students in the future.
