April 8, 2019 -- When a student returns from a field trip and says that she learned that “not everybody is gonna have a perfect home, but even if they don't, they should be grateful for what they do have,” you know it was a powerful experience. Such was the case for 3rd grader Ocean Leverette and the dozen other Noble students who visited the Compassion Experience on March 22 as part of the
after-school STREAM program.
The
Compassion Experience is a traveling project of Compassion International designed to “give visitors a chance to see life for some children from a different perspective… [with the] hope that this perspective provides a continued awareness to both this type of poverty and the opportunity we all share to make a tangible difference for kids still stuck in the cycle of poverty.”
That was the experience for the 3rd through 5th graders who moved through rooms filled with images and artifacts while listening to the true stories of Olive, Johnathan, and Kiwi who journeyed from Uganda, the Philippines and the Dominican Republic to the United States.
The stories hit home for Noble’s students, many of whom are refugees from Nepal. Sonu Rai, another 3rd grader, said the visit reminded her of how different everything felt when she first arrived in the United States. The story of the boy Jonathan reminded brothers Juantez and Juhvon Anderson of their mother’s experience as child in India. “She and her mother had to do everything on their own without her father and they had to hunt or find their own food, but her mother gave her all the love she could.”
The motto of the Compassion Experience is “Experience another world . . .without leaving yours.” The Noble students certainly felt like they did. And they also came away with a deeper appreciation for their own world. Juhvon said, “It made me feel, like, lucky to have what I have. It’s very special.”
