Pennies for Orphans

This is a story about a young lady named Leah who at just 13 years old has decided to reach out to help orphans in Ethiopia. She undertook this project for her bat mitzvah.

This idea occurred to her as her family was in the process of adopting a child from Ethiopia. When they went to Ethiopia to bring home their new daughter, Leah brought her money over and donated $2,084.00 to an orphanage. Here is Leah giving the cheque to Ms Geday, who is the orphanage director.

Imagine my surprise as I continued reading down through her story and discovered that the orphanage she donated her money to was "The Hope For The Abandoned Children and Orphan Care Association (HFTA)". This is the orphanage where Sebrina and I picked up our very special Gabriella.

Here are the pictures of Sebrina and me with Ms Geday and Gabriella.

We spent many enjoyable hours with this lady over the two days we spent at the orphanage.

I just love Leah's idea with pennies and think I may start the same thing. It will be interesting how many pennies I will accumulate in say ... one year.

How often do we see a penny on the ground and walk away from it?
How often do we just throw a penny in a drawer or the bottom of our purse and just forget about it?

If we all started saving our pennies - just how much could we accumulate for charity? The one great thing about pennies ... a penny is always worth a penny whether it is in Canadian or US dollars, so this is a win / win savings plan.

Leah's website addres is http://www.change4orphans.com/. She has quite a lot of interesting information and will continue to post what her pennies are buying in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.