Dear Friends, Family, and Collectors of Henry Isaacs' work,

I write to you again asking for help. As many of you know, a trip to Rwanda last April turned out to be a life changing experience for me. A trip through this beautiful, but often overlooked country is indeed humbling. Driving or walking on a dusty red road past green hills of rich soil, men and women smile as they walk past, barefoot, carrying firewood, children, and rarely, food. These smiles can be deceiving, for just past them is despair.

After meeting hundreds of children in a small town called Rwinkwavu, I was inspired. While their bellies were distended, and their clothes ragged, they had hope for a better future. Though orphaned by genocide ten years past, the children of Rwinkwavu find happiness once a day, at dusk, on dusty soccer field overridden with cattle. Just before sundown each day, when their work subsistence farming or mining is done, thousands of children crowd onto two soccer fields to play a game that has turned into more than just soccer. Once divided by race and tribe, these children see no difference in one another. Perhaps some have had more to eat than others, and perhaps one boy has a home, while his friend seeks shelter each night. On the soccer field, these differences dissolve, and once a day, these children are just children.

It is difficult to understand what it means to be homeless. Hunger is often an idea that is hard to grasp, and joy is a fundamental element that we Americans take for granted. In the most overcrowded nation in Africa, these ideas are not abstract, but instead are realities for the nearly 8.2 million inhabitants of Rwanda.

Since the beginning of the Change The World Kids' Teens Connecting Continents Program in Rwinkwavu, Rwanda, the number of participants has multiplied threefold, and as the number of children grows, so do the expenditures. Having raised almost $10,000 in the past five months, we have purchased hundreds of soccer uniforms, provided a bicycle for the Rwandan coordinator of the program, and paid for countless mini-bus rentals for travel games. In order to provide educational fees for all 2,700 children in the program, we will need $35,000 each year. The critical rebuilding of the deteriorating stadium will cost $10,000. Many of you have been very generous in the past, and in order to sustain this program, and provide basic necessities of education, health, happiness, and an antidote to despair, we need your support.

Once again to help raise money for our Rwanda project, The Change The World Kids are raffling off a painting by Henry Isaacs. We are raffling this painting off for $10 per ticket, or three tickets for $25. The raffle will be drawn in late May.

To purchase a ticket, please make checks out to The Change The World Kids, with "Teens Connecting Continents Rwanda" in the memo line.

Send Checks to:

Zoë Isaacs
P.O. Box 276
Sharon, Vermont 05065

Thank you again for your kindness and support,

Zoë Isaacs

Got Questions? E-mail Zoë:      zoeisaacs@gmail.com

AND, visit the CTWK website at www.changetheworldkids.com.  We will have a new website up in about a month, which will be www.changetheworldkids.org.

Thank you for reading and considering this appeal for assistance, and I hope that you consider being part of this effort for the future of our world.

This is the duty of our generation as we enter the twenty-first century - solidarity with the weak, the persecuted, the lonely, the sick, and those in despair.  It is expressed by the desire to give a noble and humanizing meaning to a community in which all members will define themselves not by their own identity but by that of others. - Elie Wiesel

Painting: Dewey's Pond, in Quechee, Vermont. oil on canvas 24x26" 2007 framed by Henry Isaacs.  Winner will be responsible for crating and shipping costs from Woodstock, Vermont. Drawing will take place on May 1, 2008.