Children keen to help out
By John Lewis
Mortality is far from the minds of most primary school pupils, but not those at Liberton Christian School in Dunedin.
Children at the school have decided to help raise funds for former pupil Keiri Samuel who is recovering from an apple-sized astrocytoma, a grade-three brain tumour.
Principal Fiona Sizemore said Mr Samuel was a pupil at the school between 1983 and 1985, and his family was well known in the local community.
“We saw he had a need and we thought, ‘What can we do to help?’ None of the kids know Keiri but when I told them about his situation, their immediate response was ‘We would like to do something.’
“The kids have been getting an informal lesson about the health system. They were scratching their heads about why his medicine was not funded.”
It was explained to the children that the $46,000 chemotherapy drug, Temozolomide, was too expensive for the Government to fund, she said. So the pupils decided something needed to be done to help Mr Samuel raise the money needed for his life-saving treatment.
The pupils will perform The Great Christmas Robbery as their end-of-year show at the Pine Hill School Hall at 7pm today and tomorrow. Entry is by donation.
Mrs Sizemore said if the school could raise money for Mr Samuel’s treatment, it would show the pupils they could make a difference.
Otago Daily Times, December 7, 2006
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