Senior Service Project Introduction

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My name is Kennedy Donnelly and I am from Denver, Colorado. I am currently a junior in high school at Culver Academies, a boarding school in Culver, Indiana. During the fall of my junior year I was asked to begin thinking about my Senior Service Project and the type of project I wanted to take on. I knew that I didn’t want to do something easy, I wanted to be challenged. I was walking around the Culver campus one day when I began to think about how fortunate I am to have a beautiful school with the finest facilities. I began to reflect on how there are so many children in our world that do not even have a building to have a class in. From then on I knew I wanted my project to be related to children’s education and I knew that I was going to incorporate it with an extreme adventure. During the summer of 2012 I will be biking across America to raise money for children’s education.

I came across an organization called Pencils of Promise, which raises money to fund education for children in Nicaragua, Guatemala, and Laos; their story inspired me. The founder asked a child, “What do you want most in the world?” The child’s response was, “A pencil.” I was intrigued by this organization because they took that one child’s wish and now fund children’s education and build schools in those three countries. I also wanted to be able to do something that would challenge me physically and mentally because every day there are children struggling to do simple tasks. Convincing my parents to let me bike across America was tough, but I found a way to persuade them by tying biking across America with my Senior Service Project. I named my project, Pedaling for Pencils, the journey across America for a child’s future. My vision is to help create awareness of the issue that there are children who can’t afford an education and whose futures are limited.

         After I found my route to serve others, I had to establish a route across the country. I found Teen Treks , a camp that takes students all over the world on bikes. I will be riding with Teen Treks from Oregon to New York, stopping at all the states in between and a part of Canada. I will be carrying all of my equipment from tents to tools on my bike, and I will be camping or staying in hostels along the way. In order to achieve all 3,880 miles, I will ride 50 to 100 miles every day. It will take me around 55 days.  I believe it is important to have to work hard for what I want to achieve and this adventure will be extremely challenging. 

           My goal is to raise $10,000 by the end of the summer. That money would allow Pencils of Promise to build a classroom and fund the education of 400 children. Additionally, I would like to raise $15,000 by June 2013 to build an entire school.

         A piece of wood with a strip of graphite that cost about 10 cents to make can change the life of a young boy or girl. The materials that are easily accessible to students like myself are often taken for granted. There are more than 75 million children without access to education, and together we can do something about it. Education is a cause that's truly important to me, so I'm excited to join the Pencils of Promise movement that empowers lives around the world by building schools for children in need. Your financial support will make the dream of an education a reality for so many children. All they need is one pencil to start and with your donation they can.

Click HERE to make an Online Donation !

Checks can also be mailed directly to me:
Kennedy Donnelly 
PO Box 280963
Denver, CO 80228