Meredith-Dunn School ‘walks’ to Quito, Ecuador

How long does it take to walk to Quito, Ecuador? Well, the students at Meredith-Dunn School can tell you it takes one week and lots of friends to help you!
The school recently held a Virtual Walk to Quito. Entrants wore pedometers for a week, tracked their mileage, and walked the equivalent of the approximately 4,086 miles to Quito.
"It’s a new twist on an age-old fundraiser," said Carol Morrison, Development Director at Meredith-Dunn. "We’ve held traditional walks in the past but wanted to do something more exciting and interesting this year."
"We are so very grateful to Sister Cities of Louisville for working with us and introducing us to the beautiful culture of Quito," said Kyle Pierce, the school’s marketing director. "They have been so gracious…providing resources for our students, introducing us to a dance troupe in Quito, giving us bags and artwork to use as prizes…. They’ve been wonderful."
The students who raised the most money during their Virtual Walk to Quito met with Mayor Jerry Abramson in the Mayor’s Gallery at Metro Hall and presented a new Ecuadorian flag to him. The bright new flag now hangs in Jefferson Square alongside the flags of the countries of Louisville’s other seven Sister Cities.
Meredith-Dunn School provides individualized education to students with learning differences in grades K-8. Proceeds from the Virtual Walk to Quito will provide tuition assistance, helping children who otherwise would not be able to attend the school. For more information about the Walk to Quito, or Meredith-Dunn School, please visit their website at www.meredithdunnschool.org.
Submitted by Kyle Pierce

Kentucky Country Day students travel back to Tamale, Ghana

By Kelly Beam and Hayden Dry:

On the first day of the year we were off to head back to our favorite country in the world, Ghana. Both of us had previously been in Ghana in June of 2008 for two weeks, and fell so in love with the country and its people that we just had to return. We wanted a reason to go back, and to work with Dahin Sheli Primary School. We decided to focus our Senior Graduation Project on education differences between Ghana and America. We would spend three weeks as teaching assistants at Dhain Sheli Primary School in Tamale, Ghana. When we arrived in Tamale, we were greeted by our old friends and welcomed right back into our second home. We were immediately embraced by everyone at Sister Cities Tamale and so excited to finally be back. The purpose of our trip was to work as teaching assistants at Dahin Sheli Primary School. We would teach and observe classes to figure out the differences between the American and Ghanaian education system. We wanted to do this because during our June trip we had fallen in love with the school and its children. Our goal for our trip was also to develop a connection between Dahin Sheli’s teachers and students and our own. We brought with us over one hundred letters from students at our school and were able to collect even more from their students to bring home. Over the course of this school year we have established a pen pal relationship between the lower and middle school students at both schools. We also collected several e-mail addresses from teachers there to bring to our teachers so they could communicate via e-mail about different teaching strategies and techniques. Not only did we get a lot out of our trip, but we were also able to extend its effects to both schools through the lasting exchanges created through email. Our hope is that in the future teachers and students from our sister schools will be able to come here and continue the exchange of knowledge.