Pupils live like Mexicans at camp
By GLYNNIS MAPP, SUN MEDIA
http://lfpress.ca/newsstand/News/Local/ ... 34014.html

Rebecca Zynomirski, 12, knows what it's like to live in Mexico on $16 a day.

While attending a leadership camp in Arizona last week, Zynomirski and three other pupils from Kensal Park public school took part in an exercise in which they only could only spend 160 pesos a day.

That amount is what many factory workers in Mexico are paid.

"It let us know what it's like to live (in Mexico). It's really hard," Zynomirski said. "We had to make dinner for the whole group with only that money.

"We bought food at the local markets. We budgeted and pretended that one person was sick in the group. We had to set money aside for medicine, too," she said.

"It wasn't enough. The money ran out."

Kensal Park was one of only six North American schools chosen to send pupils to the Wind-Song Leadership Camp in Tucson.

The all-expenses paid camp is run by Free the Children, a Canadian charity started by brothers Craig and Marc Kielburger.

Founded by Craig Kielburger when he was 12, the charity has built about 400 schools around the world.

The two brothers combined to write the book Me to We: Turning Self-Help on Its Head, which challenges readers to discover the joy of helping others.

Me to We Clubs have sprung up in many Thames Valley schools, adopting villages to help build schools.

Three Kensal Park teachers and Grade 6 pupils Alison St. Pierre and Nicholas Maharaj and Grade 7 pupil Jackie Demendeeve attended the leadership camp.

Campers were encouraged to eat healthy foods, lead active lives and help others.

After arriving on Aug. 10, the group visited migrant shelters and community centres in the Tucson area and learned about development and economic issues in Mexico.

"We hear about the migration issue from the news, but you don't get to see it first hand," said teacher David Thwaits, leader of the Kensal Park's Me to We Club and a member of the social justice committee at the Thames Valley District school board.

"They learned about the issues hands on."

The group also took a car trip across the scorching desert to the five-metre high, 3,200-kilometre-long barbed-wire border between Mexico and the United States.

Zynomirski said she learned much about immigration and illegal border-crossing issues.

"The trip helped me learn that things aren't as easy as they are in Canada. . . . It changed my life."