Anika Driedger, a Grade 2 student at Horace Allen School, recently embarked on a mission to raise $5,000 for Maria’s Big House of Hope, an orphanage in China which provides special care to children in need of surgery.
Anika started her project by making a speech to her classmates and collecting roughly $40 in loose change donations from them, as well as an additional $70 from neighbours, putting her at $110 of her $5,000 goal.
On June 18th, she will be holding a garage sale and bottle drive at her grandmother’s home, located at 1801 York Creek Cresent in Blairmore, which she hopes will allow her to raise a large portion of the remainder.
Anika’s mother, Shannon Anderson, said all of the proceeds will be used to fund a specific surgery or provide an adoption grant for one child at the orphanage.
“Whatever amount we get will go toward something specific,” she said, noting that $500 funds a cleft palate surgery, and $5,000 provides an adoption grant.
Anika decided she wanted to help orphans after her grandmother read her a book about a young girl who built an orphanage, and decided she wanted to help orphans in her own way.
“We’re not as needy as they are, so we should help them,” said the seven-year-old. “I want to help provide food and clothes for them, because that’s what they need.”
Anika and Anderson soon began looking into orphanages which they could help, and ultimately decided on Maria’s Big House of Hope.
MBHOH was created by the non-profit organization Show Hope, after hearing the heartbreaking story of how it got its start, and because of the specialized care and support it provides to children who may not otherwise get adopted.
The orphanage was started after its founders, Steven and Mary Beth Chapman, lost their daughter Maria, when she was struck and killed by a vehicle outside their home in Tennessee.
Maria, a Chinese orphan the Chapman’s had adopted, was five years old when she died.