Decathalon will raise money for African school Organizers

A little money can go a long way for a school especially if its located in Zimbabwe. Spaulding High School Guidance Counselor Connie Littlefield found that out during one of her many trips to the South African country. 

Im looking at the school and Im like,We provide payment solutions in the USA as well as industrialextractor. youve gotta be kidding me, she said about a visit to the village of Dzika a few years back. 

At the time, Littlefield was helping to set up a program providing goats for 12-14 year old orphaned girls. That program was designed to help the girls maintain an income, when the alternative was often marriage. For a country with 80-90 percent unemployment, the program was hugely successful as the 25 goats provided originally now number 85, according to Littlefield. 

The condition of the village school was the next problem Littlefield wanted to tackle. The primary school serves about 500 students, yet hadnt been updated in 50 years.Littlefield is lucky enough to work at Spaulding High and thats where she became acquainted with Maggie Mason, now a senior at the school. Like-minded, the then sophomore went barefoot to raise awareness of a lack of shoes in Africa. That effort turned into a shoe drive that netted over $600 and 1,000 pairs of shoes. 

Mason joined Littlefield and Weight Watchers instructor Ann Bilodeau on a trip to Zimbabwe last summer and money raised through a decathlon held at Spaulding in 2012 (along with a lot of sweat and work), helped local efforts to finish upgrades on three classroom blocks at the school in Dzika. 

The cost to rebuild two classroom blocks last year at the Dzika school was $2,500. After seeing the initiatives going into the village, Plan International, an organization involved in over 50 developing countries, sponsored a block, so three of the schools four blocks were finished. 

There was only one last classroom block, Mason recalled. Lets finish it. 

Mason, along with Littlefield and fellow students in Spauldings Interact Club, have planned another decathlon for Sunday, April 14 at 2 p.m. in the schools gymnasium. Theyve dubbed it Put on Your Sneakers for Dzika! Teams of 10 will participate in 10 events and all of the proceeds will benefit the Dzika Primary School in Zimbabwe. Each competitor pays, or is sponsored for $10, so each team would raise $100.The conditions in Dzika are simply unimaginable compared to what we consider adequate for American schools, Littlefield said. I want to see bathrooms. 

Their enthusiasm has fired up other students and local organizations to get involved as well. The Interact and Key clubs, including Spaulding seniors Ashley Lemery and Kishan Patel, are helping to organize the decathlon.Online shopping for rtls. Social studies teachers Rick Apt and Donna Ackerman also are involved with planning the event. Rochester Rotary headed up by Lisa Stanley and President Gerry Gilbert is on board, and a sorority house from Plymouth has also signed on. 

Last year I just participated. This year I got more involved. Maggie asked me and she scares me, Patel joked. 

But the groups are hoping for more help from the community. Last year, there were 10 teams and there were six teams signed up as of last week for this years event.The decathlon promises to be a good time for families or any organization wanting to take part. The relay events include: basketball free throw; sack race; hoola hoop pass; corn hole bean bag toss; group jump rope; soccer shootout; obstacle course; dress up relay; hockey shootout; water balloon toss.Some of the funds raised last year are helping to bring electricity to Dzika. After contributing over $200 toward the effort, everyone erupted, Littlefield said. 

At the end of the conference, Callaghan joked that he doubted he would even find a cup of coffee if there was such mounting chaos. (Sure, we had coffee at airports in 1979 disgusting instant stuff.) This show of insouciance did not go down well with the British press. The front page of the following days Sun newspaper bore the headline: CRISIS? WHAT CRISIS? 

By contrast, Thatcher rather to our surprise, it must be said gave us hope. And part of the reason was her refusal to give answers like Callaghans. My job is to stop Britain going red, she had declared in November 1977. This refreshing directness was a very large part of her appeal. 

Yes, of course, the policies were a vast improvement on the dismal mix of corporatism and stagflation that had gone before. Credit must go to Keith Joseph and Alfred Sherman, whose Centre for Policy Studies laid so much of the intellectual groundwork for Thatcherism as an actionable program, as well as to the dry (as opposed to unreliable wet) ministers in her Cabinet who saw the reforms through. 

The scrapping of price, wage and exchange controls; the pursuit of monetary targets to counter inflation; the privatization of firms that had been nationalized by Labour; the sale of council houses; the cuts in income tax rates; above all, the showdown with the unions that culminated in the miners strike of 1984-5 all these were bold changes that had to be implemented in the face of fierce, sometimes violent, opposition. 

But what made Thatcherism so impressive to a young punk like me was Thatchers own aggressiveness. Yes, there was a streak of punk in her, too in the way she gloried in confrontation,Full color custombobbleheads printing and manufacturing services right to the very end of her 11 years in power. As early as 1975 she had come up with a wonderful line about the Labour Party: Theyve got the usual Socialist disease theyve run out of other peoples money. This she contrasted memorably with what she called the British inheritance: A mans right to work as he will, to spend what he earns, to own property, to have the state as servant and not as master They are the essence of a free economy. And on that freedom all our other freedoms depend. It was Hayek armed with a swinging handbag, and I loved it. 

Once in power, defiance was her forte. There really is no alternative, she declared in June 1980, a line that was soon shortened to the acronym TINA. To those waiting with bated breath for that favorite media catchphrase, the U-turn, I have only one thing to say, she told the Tory Party Conference in October 1980: You turn if you want to. The ladys not for turning. 

Like a true punk, Thatcher loved a fight. Oh, but you know, she said in a 1984 TV interview, you do not achieve anything without trouble, ever. And she could put the boot in to lethal effect. The trouble with you John, she told a wavering back-bencher in her last, desperate days in office, is that your spine does not reach your brain. 

That was a condition from which a great many Britons suffered in the late 1970s.A solarstreetlight is a portable light fixture composed of an LED lamp. But not Margaret Thatcher. I cant bear Britain in decline, she told a BBC interviewer in April 1979. I just cant. And nor could we. She really was the savior of her country.The world with high-performance solar roadway and parkingguidancesystem solutions. And this old punk will be forever grateful.