The eight-year-old who built a school

So this is probably going to get me in trouble, but here goes:

To the billions of people living in the developing world … we’re all ‘Karens’.

“Barefoot! How dare you label me a Karen! I DEMAND to speak to your editor!”

(Trust me, he does not care.)

Yet let me introduce you to someone you should speak to: an eight-year-old girl called Amalia.

Amalia lives in Adelaide with her mum and brothers and sisters. She loves fashion, horse riding and doing her pocket money jobs. Yet there’s something amazing about what Amalia has done with the money she put in her Give Bucket:

She built a school.

Seriously. Amalia and her mum, Susan, built a three-storey school that is now home to 120 primary school students. It’s in Kenya, Africa, in a place called Korogocho.

Korogocho is a Swahili word meaning ‘shoulder to shoulder’ … and that’s how people live in Korogocho. There isn’t much electricity, so it gets dark inside. There are no air-conditioners, and lots of people have to share one tap for water.

The kids Amalia’s age play in a creek that’s polluted with rubbish and sewage. “For fun they find old bike tyres and use them as hula hoops”, says Amalia.

Yes, life in Korogocho is tough. Many kids there can’t afford to go to school, and those who do are stuck in classrooms that can have as many as 150 kids!

Amalia and her mum set out to do something for the kids of Korogocho. They are not rich, but they paid for it all themselves from their Give Buckets.

And now that the school is up and running they are paying the wages for six teachers and three helpers. The kids get cooked lunches and the chance to learn dancing and all the important stuff that kids need to learn.

“I’m proud of our school. If we hadn’t built it, none of those kids would have gotten to go to school”, Amalia tells me. “The reason my Give Bucket is so important to me is that my goal in life is ‘to make the world kinder’.”

Amalia is just one of the kids in my new book, Barefoot Kids.

Talking to kids about money can sometimes feel a little icky … kind of consumerist and capitalist.

But let me tell you a secret: the jam jars aren’t really about money at all … they’re about hard work, kindness, and feeling good inside.

When Amalia’s mum asked her, “what do you want to be now?”

She replied, “everything I already am”.

How good is that?

Tread Your Own Path!