In this edition of our Stories of Hope blog series, our Director of U.S. Programs, Renée Kube continues her visits to our affiliated sites in Arizona, where she meets with administrators at Greyhills Academy to talk about how the school is helping children prepare for the future and how our sponsorship goes a long way in supporting those efforts.
“If parents choose Greyhills, then their children could maintain their sponsors’ support and encouragement through high school graduation.”
Getting to know Greyhills
“Greyhills Academy High School is located in Tuba City, a busy and bustling place on the Navajo reservation. When I first contacted our volunteer coordinator, Roger, about the proposed site visit in late 2022, he said the school’s pandemic policy does not allow visitors on school grounds at this time. I proposed that Roger and I have an off-site meeting at a local restaurant, and he readily agreed.”
“Despite the different surroundings and my disappointment at not seeing any of the students, we had an excellent meeting. Roger explained that their Governing Board had voted to go on lockdown back in March 2020 and had not lifted that order until this 2022-2023 school year. Greyhills was not only fully virtual during the rest of the 2019-2020 school year, but remained virtual through the 2020-2021 and 2021-2022 school years as well. There was no hybrid option.”
Adjusting after the pandemic
Students at Greyhills Academy are benefiting thanks to theirs sponsors.
“Roger said in-person instruction returned on August 9, 2022. The school has daily temperature checks, maintains social distancing, and does vigorous contact tracing. So far there have been no outbreaks of COVID-19, although they were concerned at the time about rising influenza and RSV.”
“Roger says two other staff help him with our sponsorship program: Lee, the school’s Special Education teacher and Zelda, the Homeliving Manager. He’s grateful for their support to run our program smoothly.”
“The school’s enrollment is currently 197 students in grades 9th through 12th. The student to teacher ratio is 10:1. Roger was very proud to share that the graduation rate is over 90%, and he attributes this to the high level of attention and instruction. Yet, Roger still expressed his concern about the impact of the pandemic on their students and families – enrollment has declined 23% over the past five years.”
A wonderful partnership
“One of the developments Roger was happy to share was a partnership between the high school and Arizona State University. Juniors and seniors can take engineering classes through a portal called ASU Prep Digital. The students get a taste of how a college course feels while earning college credits. Roger said the students are hungry to learn and are so appreciative of the opportunity.”
“Native American students are underrepresented on college campuses. Demographic data shows that only 3.5% of people who live on Arizona’s reservations have earned a bachelor’s degree or higher. Programs like ASU’s can make high school students more confident and ready.”
“Roger also shared that this year the school is beginning an initiative to recruit more students in an organized and purposeful way. In the past, the administration would usually sit back and let parents come to them, and they had plenty of students. But with the pandemic and sharply declining enrollment, they must work to spread the word of the benefits that Greyhills Academy High School has to offer. In addition to the personal attention from faculty and staff, the school offers student learning opportunities, STEM programs, and the Miss Greyhills Pageant.”
“Roger and I both agreed that Children Incorporated’s sponsorship program is one of those benefits and advantages that the school has to offer. Several of the elementary schools that feed into Greyhills are also affiliated with our organization. Thus, if parents choose Greyhills, then their children could maintain their sponsors’ support and encouragement through high school graduation.”
You can sponsor a child in one of three ways: call our office at 1-800-538-5381 and speak with one of our staff members; email us at sponsorship@children-inc.org; or go online to our sponsorship portal, create an account, and search for a child that is available for sponsorship.
Last fall, our Director of U.S. Programs, Renée Kube, and our U.S. Sponsorship Specialist, Kristen Walthall, had the chance to return to Arizona for the first time since the COVID-19 pandemic to visit our affiliated sites and meet with our volunteer coordinators. Today, as a part of our Stories of Hope series, we hear from Renée about the history of Navajo Nation and the effects of the pandemic on this already vulnerable population.
“The families are trying to hold on to their way of life while developing their capacity to earn their livelihoods and facing the challenges of poverty.”
About Navajo Nation
“The Navajo Nation is a semi-autonomous territory that includes portions of Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah, and shares a border with Colorado. The community of Teec Nos Pos is close to the Four Corners National Monument and Navajo Tribal Park. It contains the quadripoint where those four states come together, the only place in the U.S. where that occurs. The Hopi Reservation is completely enclosed by the Navajo Reservation,” explains Renée.
“The largest towns and small cities within Navajo Nation (in order of size and population) are Tuba City, Arizona; Shiprock, New Mexico; Chinle, Arizona; Kayenta, Arizona; Fort Defiance, Arizona; Window Rock, Arizona (the capital); and its bordering community, St. Michaels, Arizona. Children Incorporated has affiliated sites in Tuba City, Kayenta, and St. Michaels, as well as in many of the smaller communities.”
“There are larger cities just outside the border of Navajo Nation, and these are important places for shopping for groceries and supplies; for medical care that falls beyond the scope of the Indian Health Service Clinics; and for job opportunities for those who choose to live outside the reservation. Two of these cities are in Arizona: Flagstaff to the south and Page to the north. Children Incorporated has affiliations in Page,” said Renée.
“However, many Navajo people choose not to live in either the larger cities or the towns. Instead, they prefer hozho naasha, which means ‘to walk in beauty,’ expressed by being in balance with and closely interconnected with the natural world, living in very small communities, and finding happiness and joy in daily life skills, ceremonies, and events. For traditional Navajos, such things might include living in a hogan (or having one nearby for ceremonial use), growing traditional crops (especially corn for its food and sacred pollen), herding sheep (for its meat and wool), and attending ceremonial events like a kinaalda (puberty ceremony), nidaa (enemy way), ye’ii bicheii (a healing ceremony), and more. It is considered important to understand hozho so that one can use it to guide choices and decisions throughout one’s life.”
Renée is pictured in one of the many amazing national parks in Arizona.
“Traditional Navajos believe that at birth one starts the Corn Pollen Path of Life. One aspires to reach 102 years of age, the culmination of a long, happy, and fruitful life, and to be in good condition and in balance with everything. Within the path of life, they wish to have and maintain beauty and balance within family, home, livelihood, kinship, community, Navajo Nation, and the world outside. Wherever one goes, one is to live by the teachings, to find good things out there, and to bring them home,” explains Renée.
Understand the people
“The Navajo tribe call themselves Diné, which literally means ‘The People.’ Traditional Navajo believe it is imperative to go back to the true essence of hozho and to instill it back into the lives of Diné children and youth. They believe that their youth feel a yearning for more knowledge of Navajo language and culture, which will help them to feel pride and to help them make moral decisions.”
“The reservation’s landscape is full of beauty and variety; it is ever changing. The families are trying to hold on to their way of life while developing their capacity to earn their livelihoods and facing the challenges of poverty. The pandemic has dealt a terrible blow to these efforts,” said Renée.
The detrimental effects of the pandemic
“Covid-19 was and still is contracted at disproportionate rates on Navajo Nation as compared to the rest of the country. This is due to the historic marginalization of its people. There has been long standing neglect by government entities when it comes to basic infrastructure to support Native populations. The conditions in which people are born, live, learn, and work are known as the social determinants of health. When those are inadequate, then there are negative effects on people’s physical and mental health. It has been documented extensively that low quality jobs, limited income, poverty, and low education are fundamentally connected to poor health outcomes.”
“Within Navajo Nation, 35.8% of households are below the federal poverty threshold, and most hover at or barely above it. (This is compared to 12% at the national level.) Federal funding for health care has been inadequate and has not kept pace with rising costs of prescription drugs, specialized healthcare, and competitive salaries to attract health professionals. Life expectancy is lower for Navajo Nation as compared to the rest of the country. There are higher rates of heart disease, substance abuse, diabetes, and obesity,” said Renée.
“With the return of not only students, but the entire administration, faculty, and staff, assessments can now be better made on the negative impacts of the pandemic on student population and enrollment.”
“These pre-existing conditions made people more vulnerable to contracting the coronavirus, and to experiencing serious illness and death. Access to basic health services presents challenges for most of Navajo Nation, due to the remoteness of rural areas where families live. Lack of family transportation and/or cost of fuel are often factors that impede access to health care.”
“Navajo Nation enforced some of the most extreme social distancing measures in the country. It enacted 57-hour weekend lockdowns during the height of the pandemic and closed even essential businesses such as gas stations,” said Renée.
“When schools across the U.S. closed abruptly in March 2020 in an effort to slow the spread of Covid-19, there were immediate challenges for continuing the children’s education. Many districts across the country already had technology infrastructure, and students had school-issued electronic devices. That was not the case on Navajo Nation.”
“The remainder of the 2019-2020 school year was a scramble to make paper packets for the littlest students and to try and get electronic devices into the hands of the older students. This resulted in sibling groups walking for distances to find hills that might have a cellular signal; families driving to towns where they could go to parking lots and surf off merchants’ Wi-Fi signals; and even school buses becoming Wi-Fi hotspots where families would drive to predetermined places so they could take their children to the buses to upload their work and download their new assignments,” said Renée.
“Navajo Nation President, Jonathan Nez, said the reservation is a telecommunications desert, but it is a desert that is ready to bloom. There has been a big push to build and expand the network, but there’s a long way to go.”
“The 2020-2021 school year began as more of the same. Some Navajo Nation school districts were able to implement hybrid instruction with increased school-based health measures. In these, children were divided, with half going to the schools for in-person instruction for two days, then the other half going for two days, with one day reserved for deep-cleaning, parent conferences, and/or food preparation and distribution. But many remote districts were not able to implement hybrid instruction. Instead, they remained on fully-virtual instruction, which has many deficits for students. The children missed the face-to-face encounters with caring administration, faculty, and staff. They missed opportunities for in-person classroom discussions and hands-on learning in small groups. They missed athletics, clubs, and other activities. Furthermore, in many communities, schools are also the hub for needed supports such as school meals, counseling, and before-and-after-school childcare,” said Renée.
“Thankfully, the development of a vaccine and its trial in December 2020, followed by a rollout to the public over the spring of 2021, was a huge help. As the school year ended in May 2021, more families were getting the vaccine. Infection rates began to drop.”
New hope in a new school year
“The 2021-2022 school year saw the development of boosters and a big push to return to fully in-person instruction. All public health measures were followed, and Navajo Nation displayed an online Covid Dashboard to show the rise, drop, and autumn/winter surges of infection rates. Just like everywhere else, people developed ‘Covid fatigue.’ People found it increasingly difficult and depressing to stay at home for so long,” said Renée.
“The 2022-2023 school year is seeing a further return to normal. In most places, schools have fully reopened to in-person learning, and athletics, clubs, and activities have resumed. The Navajo Nation Fairs returned. However, on the reservation, caution is still the byword. Masking and social distancing are still observed. With the return of not only students, but the entire administration, faculty, and staff, assessments can now be better made on the negative impacts of the pandemic on student population and enrollment. The smaller and more rural schools have lost a large percentage of children, as their families migrated to other towns in search of work, health clinics, and schools that could offer more opportunities for their children. The viability of some of these schools is in question, and a few of these are affiliated with our organization.”
You can sponsor a child one of three ways: call our office at 1-800-538-5381 and speak with one of our staff members; email us at sponsorship@children-inc.org; or go online to our sponsorship portal, create an account, and search for a child that is available for sponsorship.
Each summer, as the time for a new school year approaches, businesses launch their latest “Back to School” sales pitches. They roll out the big promotions to encourage consumers to purchase everything from pencils and pens to backpacks, calculators, and laptop computers. Many states even have days when they suspend sales taxes to encourage greater spending on these school items. According to the National Retail Foundation, people in the United States spent an astounding $37 billion dollars on back to school supplies in 2022. That breaks down to roughly $864 per student, up from nearly $200 from just two years before.
The strong need for support
For families already living in poverty and struggling to just get by, back to school shopping is a huge burden; in fact, they often just cannot do it.
For families already living in poverty and struggling to just get by, back to school shopping is a huge burden; in fact, they often just cannot do it. When we visit with our voluneer coordinators at our affiliated site locations, many which are school-based, we often hear stories of how many children do not have the supplies they need to do their schoolwork. Though most schools now provide access to computers and laptops that students may use, many young learners still lack basic educational materials. These items are essential to students not only being prepared for class, but without them, they may feel ashamed or embarrassed to be lacking where their classmates are not.
With our help, children can start the school year off right, thanks to donations to our Back to School Fund.
Our volunteer coordinators do their best to maintain a supply of composition books, notebook paper, pencils, pens, rulers, glue sticks, staplers, and backpacks in their offices to meet the many needs of these children. They also maintain essential clothing such as pants, shirts, underwear, shoes, and socks for those children whose own wardrobes are worn, dirty, or ill-fitting. Snacks such as granola and protein bars and juice boxes are also badly needed as children return to school each year and throughout all of the months that follow. But sometimes, there is just not enough.This is where Children Incorporated comes in.
our Back to School Fund to the rescue
Money contributed to our affiliated school sites, all thanks to Children Incorporated donors, enables our coordinators to stock their shelves and supply closets at the beginning of the school year and beyond. This is why our Back to School Fund is an absolutely essential part of what we offer and why we are asking for your support of this essential fund.
If you can, please consider what you can afford to give in support of our Back to School Fund, and know that your dollars are contributing to the growth of future generations of leaders. When we help students start the school year off right, we set a path for them to stay confident for the entire year. Together, we can make a huge difference.
Thank you for your loyal support of children in need.
From the heart,
Ronald H. Carter
President and Chief Executive Officer
Children Incorporated
It is hard to believe that 2023 is the 20th anniversary of my time at Children Incorporated – ten of which I have been blessed to lead the organization as our CEO and President.
I would love to ask that you consider helping me reach a goal of getting 20 children sponsored to celebrate 20 years of my time with Children Incorporated.
During my time with this incredible organization, I have been very blessed to work with some absolutely inspiring people and to be afforded many wonderful opportunities for personal growth. Children Incorporated has changed a lot over these last twenty years, and it continues to morph and rearrange as we adapt to the changing trends and interests of our wonderful and generous donors.
I am grateful beyond measure to work in a setting like Children Incorporated. I am surrounded by people whose passion is to change and better the lives of children and young adults, and I am personally seeing the good that we are able to do each and every day. I believe that we each have a responsibility to try and make our world a bit better.
To mark my time here, I would love to ask that you consider helping me reach a goal of getting 20 children sponsored to celebrate 20 years of my time with Children Incorporated.
My nineteen-year-old daughter, a sophomore in college, moved into a shared apartment back in the fall. Deciding which of her belongings to bringfrom home was a challenge because of the limited space in her closet and dresser at the apartment.
New needs arise each day, and Children Incorporated is there to meet as many of those needs as possible, often through this special outreach effort – our Clothing and Shoes Fund.
My family is currently in the process of downsizing to a smaller house, so we wanted my daughter to take as many of her personal belongings with her as possible. She was actually forced to get rid of quite a few quality items as she moved into her new residence because there simply was no room for them.
You see, my daughter loves clothes and shoes, and she has a lot of them. She likes nothing better than to scour the racks at thrift, bargain, and vintage clothing stores in search of discounted name-brands and stylish jeans, tops, outerwear and sneakers. This problem – having too many clothes and shoes – is definitely not one that the children enrolled in Children Incorporated’s sponsorship program ever encounter. In fact, many of them face just the opposite issue. Over the years, wehave heard numerous stories of children with only one outfit suitable to wear to school, or of children whose clothes are threadbare and ill-fitting. We have even witnessed siblings who shared one coat between them, forcing them to alternate the days they attended school during the heart of winter.
Our Clothing and Shoes Fund provides for children in the United States and across the world.
It is a common theme, even today, in many of our U.S. site locations for children to attend school during the coldest months of the year without socks, wearing flimsy footwear such as flip-flops, and without jackets, coats, gloves, or hats.
Our Clothing Fund is one of the most important resources we have for helping children to dress appropriately, neatly, and warmly. This fund has provided pants, shirts, shoes and socks to thousands upon thousands of children in need. It was one of the first special funds that we created back in the 1960s and was originally called simply our Warm Clothing Fund. Over the decades we, through the incredible and continuing generosity of our sponsors and donors, have supplied children with coats and jackets, hats and gloves, and in some situations, sandals, shorts and t-shirts, to equip them for the weather where they live.
We come to you again, asking for your support of our Clothing Fund. New needs arise each day, and Children Incorporated is there to meet as many of those needs as possible, often through this special outreach effort – our Clothing Fund.
Our organization has repeatedly been recognized as an exemplary nonprofit by the major charitable monitoring groups, such as Charity Navigator and Charity Watch, because we take helping children seriously. Our mission is and always has been to improve lives and to offer hope and opportunity. We can only do these things with your help.
From the heart,
Ron Carter, President and CEO
Children Incorporated
As a part of our ongoing Stories of Hope blog series, we want to share with you our February 2023 Impact Report as a way to say “thank you” to all our supporters who make our work possible.
This past month, your donations have provided funds for an educational field trip to Washington, D.C. for students who attend Martin County Middle School in Kentucky, among so much more.
Beyond what our donors already provide to children through our sponsorship program, additional donations to our Special Funds and Special Projects allow us to help families and communities as well, often in times of crisis.
YOUR IMPACT AROUND THE WORLD
Just in this past month, you have:
– Provided funds to purchase food for an entire month for children at Santa Isabel Seton in Guatemala
– Provided funds for an educational field trip to Washington, D.C. for students who attend Martin County Middle School in Kentucky
– Provided funds to purchase food for children at the Armenian Secondary School in Anjar, Lebanon
– Provided funds to purchase food for a month for children at the Dandora Community Center in Kenya
– Provided food for the month of February for 200 children at St. John’s Community Center in Kenya
– Provided funds to purchase food for a month for 25 children at the Fortune’s Children Center in the Philippines
– Provided winter boots and socks for students at the Dennehotso Boarding School in Arizona
– Provided funds to buy warm blankets for students at the Hanaa Dli Community School/Huerfano Dormitory in New Mexico
– Provided emergency funding for food for a newly enrolled sponsored child and her family at Morgan County Middle School
– Provided space heaters for a family in need at Baca Dlo’ay azhi Community School in New Mexico
HOW do I MAKE A DONATION TO CHILDREN INCORPORATED?
You can donate to Children Incorporated in one of three ways: call our office at 1-800-538-5381 and speak with one of our staff members; email us at hello@children-inc.org and a staff member can assist you with making a donation; or go online to our donation portal, create an account, and choose a particular fund in which to make a donation.
