Honors college students use social media to help soldiers

Students use social media to assist soldiers
By Jessica Velez ASST. NEWS EDITOR
Published: Monday, April 23, 2012
SPECIAL TO THE ORACLE

As a result of their efforts, soldiers deliver school supplies to children in Afghanistan.

Social media might be useful for keeping track of friends and messaging the occasional celebrity, but a group of honors students is using the social media platform to help Afghan children and veterans of the Iraq War and Afghanistan conflict.

“Social Media, Social Change: One Pencil Can Help Bring Peace,” is an honors course in its second semester of existence. Taught by Liisa Temple, an Emmy Award-winning freelance journalist, the idea for the course grew from School Supplies for Afghan Children, a charity she started with her husband, retired U.S. Air Force Senior Master Sgt. Rex Temple, in 2009 after an encounter he had with a child in Afghanistan.

“When I was handing out the candy, this particular child was fixated on my ballpoint pen,” Rex said. “And he kept saying … the Dari word for pen.”

Rex said he knew what the word meant but asked his interpreter why the child kept saying it. He learned that the child didn’t want to be like his father and toil in the fields.

“He knew the route out of poverty was through education,” Rex said.

Rex called Liisa at home and asked her to ship all of the extra pens and pencils they had lying around their house, an effort that eventually grew into the school supplies program.

Students enrolled in the Honors College course follow in the footsteps of Rex, who delivered more than 700 boxes of school supplies during his last tour in Afghanistan, which ended April 2010. This semester, students have shipped 65 boxes to Afghan school children, Liisa said, with another 50 to 100 boxes ready to ship out this week. School Supplies for Afghan Children has grown to include participants in 17 states and resulted in more than 20,000 pounds of donated school supplies, such as notebooks, pens, pencils and loose-leaf paper.
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