These fourth-grade students at Highline Community School in this suburb of Denver are raising money to help free slaves in Sudan . The money is channeled through Christian Solidarity International, a nonprofit human rights organization in Zurich, Switzerland, and delivered through middlemen to buy the slaves back and return them home. The children began their unusual efforts in February when their teacher, Barbara Vogel, read a newspaper article about slavery in Sudan and Mauritania. I saw this article and wanted to share it with the students. I have been teaching for 25 years and saw the shuttle blow up with my students watching, and we have talked about the Oklahoma City bombing, but I have never seen children touched like this.
Lessons revolve around the fund-raising campaign.
Modern slavery is still going on. They then started writing letters in an effort to free one slave, and connected with Christian Solidarity International. He said that slavery is one of the consequences of a civil war between the Arab Muslims of northern Sudan and the mainly Christian and animist blacks of southern Sudan . He estimates that tens of thousands of people, mostly women and children, have been forced to work as household slaves and field hands. Eibner said the group has freed more than 4,000 slaves since 1995.