In a new attempt to make all of Souleiada's activities accessible for you I will continue posting older footage and materials. One of these is a presentation I did for 4th graders of John-F.-Kennedy School in Berlin, Germany - the school I went to for 14 years until I graduated from high school. As you can imagine it was quite an emotional experience for me to be standing in front of a group of children in a setting, which I had once been part of, and telling them about my life and what inspires me to work with children in Liangshan.
In an amazing collective effort the 4th graders had collected around 1900 Euros to support the girls in the Souleiada initiative. They had collected money from teachers, other students, and their parents and family. I was incredibly moved at what they had achieved. At the presentation, where I showed them pictures of Liangshan and the girls of Souleiada and shared with them some of the stories of these children as well as aspects of their daily lives, we agreed that I would use the money to become part of a fund for Yi girls' higher education. I also presented two classes with two framed photographs of children in Liangshan, which I had taken in Meigu and Zhaojue County respectively in Summer 2004.