(Above): The school we will build will look like this. It will cost $75,000 and it will include bathrooms, electricity, running water, and even laptops. [Patrick O’ Sullivan]

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This African School was built by Build African Schools, the nonprofit that we are consulting with in our project. The school that we will build will have laptops to better prepare African kids for today’s technologically advanced workforce.

What is the biggest problem in Africa? Unfortunately, the biggest problem is that there are too many problems.

Currently, Africans are going through the problems of bad education, poverty, disease, unemployment, and so many more.

From a population of one billion Africans, 47% make less than $1.50 a day. That’s one Big Mac for a whole African family! This extreme poverty leads to so many other issues that the Africans unfortunately must face.

However, we believe that by giving the kids an education, we will also solve all the other problems. For example, when a tribe was given malaria nets to kill mosquitoes, they assumed it could also be used as fishing nets. Multiple people died since the chemicals that would kill the mosquitoes got into the fish they ate.

We believe that with the proper education, they would have been more aware and could have made the right decision.

By giving the African kids an education we are giving them the tools they need to fix these problems that they face. By solving the problem of education, there will be more jobs, more doctors to prevent disease, more wealth, and more overall happiness for the people.

Over 80 million African kids will never receive a formal education. That’s why we, three 9^th grade students from Lynbrook High School, came together to form an official Non-Profit Organization called TeachTheFuture Foundation.

What differentiates us from other nonprofits is that we are founded and completely run by high school students. Our mission as a nonprofit organization is to better improve the lives of those in poverty by giving them an education. We believe that no one should be denied an education because of their wealth.

We started a project to build a school in Kenya, Africa and we hope that this school will help improve the lives of the kids in African Communities. We’ve started fundraising and we’ve received over $1,000 through door-to-door fundraising and car washes.

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With all the problems in Africa and all the struggles that the kids face, the most important thing is that we take a step back and compare what we have with what African children have; just to get an understanding of what these kids in Africa face.

One problem that these kids face, that we can relate to the most, is hunger. Living on $1.25 a day is similar to eating 1/12 of a burger for lunch. After working in the hot fields for hours, these children come back to their rickety home to eat something we might feed the birds on a summer day. 1/12 of a burger leads to multiple problems such as malnutrition and starvation which can only be fixed by a root cause.

But looking at what the kids don’t have and what we do have is only one part of the story; the second part is looking at what we waste that can help the suffering kids in Africa. A study by the U.S. Department of Labor and U.S. Bureau of Statistics shows that Americans waste $146 billion on energy and $165 billion on food each year.

Take this amount and divide it by how many Americans there are and you get $466.45 and $527.16 respectively. Put it together and you get $993.61. This is how much American families waste per year on food and energy, but keep in mind however that this information is pertaining to food and energy and doesn’t include the other ways in which Americans waste money like candy and soda expenses.

As Americans, we tend to waste so much money and at TeachTheFuture Foundation, we believe that this money could be distributed for the betterment of those in poverty. Donate now and together we can unite to give education to those in poverty. Let’s change the world one step at a time.