Kids Club Meets Pen Pals
By Michael Mott
Published: December 18, 2015
Caramels, letters and other treats awaited the kids of Willits Kids Club (WKC) for their first pen pal tea party this month. The kids opened their first letters, took photos and shared their correspondence with each other.
The party came about after 23 of Laura Paeyeneers’s WKC students wrote letters to pen-pals at an all-girl orphanage in Haiti, “Hearthstone Village”. Paeyeneers knew the founder of the orphanage, Lynn Meadows of Ukiah, and reached out and sent five letters last year. This year the whole class sent them.
At the Dec. 4 tea party hosted by several 5th-graders, students received their first replies from the Haitian children. They also started responding, which can take a week or two as the young students revised and added new ideas.
Gracie, a Brookside Elementary School second-grader, said she liked tea parties and pen pals especially.
“They’re kind and nice to have,” Gracie said of pen pals, shortly before opening her letter from Rymi Kisha. “Mine’s 14!” she read. “She said ‘I love you’.”
The students excitedly opened their letters and shared the doodles and drawings the Haitian children had written them. Some read about their pen pals’ favorite foods and activities, while others ate cookies and cupcakes. Another WKC student played xylophone nextdoor.
“This has been an amazing process as someone has to hand deliver the letters without a postal network in Haiti,” Paeyeneers said.
The Harrah Senior Center thrift store donated a gold frame for the occasion, so the kids could hold them up and take pictures together with makeshift mustaches and glasses. Paeyeneers said they were considering sending their group of kids to Haiti if they were able to raise the funds, so they could meet their pen pals. “Why not?” she said.
After the pictures were taken, Gracie settled down to write her reply.