UW class aluminum recycling project benefits Laramie and helps Kenya

University of Wyoming students are collecting aluminum cans to raise funds for an orphanage in Kenya.

Students in a cross-cultural communication class taught by Tracey Patton are working with Wise Recycling, a national company that promotes fundraising through community recycling. Aluminum cans can be donated through Dec. 1 to raise money to assist the Shalom Garden Orphanage in creating a school for the community.

“Last year, we found a temporary shelter for them, a church, which has now been condemned and is completely unusable,” Patton says. “Classes currently are held at the orphanage, where there are no educational materials in the school.”

She says money raised will help purchase items such as books, pencils, paper, chalk, chalkboards and one meal a day. This “school” will be the only one in that community and would be for community use.

Children now walk 2.6 miles one way to attend school. The orphanage also is the only place where children not living in the orphanage receive their one meal for the day, which consists of a banana and grain.

Margaret Kanyiri, the school’s founder and orphanage director, noted, “The most impoverished children also will receive clothing and shoes, and the school fee of $1 per month will be waived.”

The eventual class goal is to help the orphanage find a new location, or assist in building an actual school. Patton says the orphanage exists because the UW students in previous cross-cultural communication courses partnered with a group in Virginia and eventually bought land and built an orphanage.

“There is no cost, unless someone wants to make a personal donation,” Patton says. “The class is merely asking for people’s aluminum.”

Cans can be donated at collection boxes in the following locations: Agriculture Building, Biological Sciences, Cheney International Center, Classroom Building, Coe Library, Education Building, Engineering Building, fraternities and sororities, Geology Building, Health Sciences, Hoyt Hall, Information Technology, Old Main, Physical Sciences, residence halls, Ross Hall and other locations.