In eighth year, District 28 fundraiser helps build school in Africa

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Updated: February 20, 2012 9:03AM

It’s been eight years since former Westmoor School secretary Susan Vaickauski took the trip to Africa that inspired her to launch a fund raising effort to build a high school for girls in Africa.

And each of the years since students and teachers in Northbrook Elementary School District 28 have helped out, holding a Concert for Africa with student bands, food and other activities to raise money for the school.

But this month’s concert will be special, Vaickauski said, since it will mean she will have enough to actually begin building the school in the Kibera slum in Nairobi, Kenya.

“I’m so excited the school is going to be built,” she said. The schedule calls for dedicating the school Feb. 23 with construction completed by sometime in December.

The concert will be held Jan. 27 at Northbrook Junior High, 1475 Maple Ave. It will include a bake sale, pizza and T-shirt sale from 6:15 to 7 p.m. and a concert from 6:50 to 8:30 p.m.

Entertainment will include the Axidents, Radio Edit, Charlie and Maxine and 7 Cents, an all-girl group that Vaickauski said is particularly appropriate since the school will be for girls, who are often unable to obtain an education.

“They are really good,” Vaickauski said of the group.

Admission is $10 and will go to the Fred Outa Foundation that Vaickauski and her daughter created to raise money for the school.

They started it following a 2004 visit to the area where they met and worked with Outa.

Outa was born in the village of Kipiyo near Kisumu, Kenya.

His mother died when he was 3 years old and his father died when he was in eighth grade. After Outa’s father died he was forced to live as a street boy having to dig for food from others’ garbage.

When Outa was 16 an American couple who began work with street boys took Fred into their home and sent him to the United States to school. He eventually attended college earning three degrees.

During college Outa took off summers and returned to Africa. He located some government land next to the Kibera slum, one square mile and home to almost 1 million people.

Five hundred thousand of Kibera’s residents are under the age of 15. According the Fred Outa Foundation, 100,000 of the children are orphans.

At the time Vaickauski and her daughter visited Outa was working to start Spurgeon Academy, a school for orphans in the slum.

In 2004 District 28 adopted Spurgeon’s Academy, and the mother and daughter created the Fred Outa Foundation to handle the fundraising for the companion girls’ school.

Vaickauski said the foundation already has spent $30,000 to buy a seven-acre site in Kibera and another $10,000 to fence the land. Construction of the school is expected to cost about $80,000, she said.

While the school’s annual concerts have each raised as much as $8,000 , Vaickauski said she has also done a considerable amount of fund raising on her own to come up with the money needed for the school.

“Someone will say, ‘how can I help?’” Vaickauski said. “It just keeps you going.”

Vaickauski wanted to go to Nairobi for the dedication ceremony next month, but heeded U.S. State Department warnings that white westerners might be targeted for terrorist attacks in some areas.

“That prevents us from going,” she said.

But Outa, who has come to the school about every other year, will be there again t his year. In addition to attending the concert he will spend time during his visit to Northbrook to talk to students.

In a recent email message to the district, Outa said he has been gratified by the dedication of Northbrook students, staff and families to helping the orphans and in making the new school a reality.

“It means a lot to have students from Northbrook raise money to help build the school,” Outa said. “I personally want to thank them for their commitment.

“Over the years I have seen their love and passion to help the vulnerable kids in Kenya. They want these girls to have future and by doing that they can change literacy and help us towards a better world,” he said.

For Vaickauski, construction of the school, no matter how gratifying, is not the end of her involvement. She wants to continue to raise money for a dormitory so that the girls who attend the school can live there instead of in the slum.

She has given herself another five years to raise the $40,000 to build the dorm.

“I’m 65,” Vaickauski said. “My target is when I’m 70, I want to be done.”

For more information on the Fred Outa Foundation visit the web site at www.fredoutafoundation.org.