A Village of Angels

For Sixth Former Lucy Brainard, it's always the season of giving.

During a summer 2012 Groton School trip to Tanzania, Lucy met a Maasai girl known as Margaret, a student at the Orkeeswa School. Since 2010, Groton School students have visited Orkeeswa in an intensive experience of learning, service, and friendship. "Going into it, I didn't think we would have much in common," Lucy says. "But we have these real, lasting friendships with the kids there."

Of all of Lucy's friends in Tanzania, Margaret made a special impact: she has motivated Lucy to spend every school vacation selling beaded angels crafted by the Maasai women of the village. To Lucy, the reward is tangible: every 240 angels sold allows one child to attend the Orkeeswa School for a year.

Margaret began promoting her village's handiwork after attending a leadership conference in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania's largest city. At the conference, she was required to propose a microfinance project that would help her community. Margaret recognized the appeal of the delicate beadwork, and ultimately launched her initiative, asking Lucy and other Groton students if they could help broaden her market. Woodshop teacher Douglas Brown created wooden templates, so the angels could be more uniform.

Lucy now sells angels any chance she can. As soon as she returned from Tanzania, she sold the angels in Old Saybrook, Connecticut, where she visits her grandparents during the summer. “I sold 150 angels in one two-hour period,” she says. “I knew the community there was going to do it for me, as well as wanting to help the Orkeeswa School.”

Last summer, Lucy sold angels each week at the farmers markets in Old Saybrook. With other students who traveled to Tanzania, she has sold the angels during Parents Weekend. She also built a website over the summer, orkeeswasangels.wordpress.com, to spread information about the beaded angels, belts, jewelry, and ornaments—and about the cause.

A few weeks ago, over Thanksgiving break, Lucy set up shop again, selling the angels at a church fair in her home town of Lyme, Connecticut. Over Christmas vacation, she'll sell them at a Lyme coffee shop. Three students have been able to attend the Orkeeswa School for the past three years because of the sale of these angels and other beaded crafts.

“I do this project because of the impact the community had on me,” Lucy explains. “They were the most inspirational people I'd ever met—they really never stopped smiling or dreaming.”

More than anything, Lucy loves receiving letters from her friends in Tanzania; they sometimes thank her for supporting Margaret’s project. “Most of them never expected to be given the opportunity to complete secondary school and maybe even university,” Lucy says. “I just want to help my friends go to school, smile, and continue to dream big.”

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