Bali, Ethiopia students have benefactors in Boynton

By Samantha Frank

Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
What started as a yoga retreat in Bali, Indonesia for Boynton Beach High School teacher Geri Grocki has turned into a program in which about 75 students are helping children overseas.

Grocki, who teaches health and leadership classes at Boynton High, saw firsthand the struggles that children in Bali are going through to get an education during her yoga retreat five years ago. Families there have to pay to send their kids to school, and education is only mandatory through the ninth grade, she said, at which time many students opt to leave school and instead work in the rice fields to help support their families.

"I thought to myself, 'If we could take the burden off them, maybe that could break the cycle of poverty,'" Grocki said.

She and Linda Lake, a Delray Beach-based Realtor who also went on the yoga retreat, started Education Rocks, a program that pairs up students at Boynton High with students in Bali and Ethiopia who are struggling to pay for their education.

Grocki said that the program is as much about helping students overseas as it is about teaching her students leadership skills.

"They're learning about commitment and responsibility," she said.

Students signed a "promise statement" at the beginning of the school year saying that each one is committed to raising $365, which is the cost to send one child to school in Bali or Ethiopia. They plan to send letters back and forth with their students, and Grocki also is trying to set up a Skype video chat with them.

Grocki partnered with the nonprofit Bali Children's Project to find needy students in Bali, and Teibe Mesfin, a Palm Beach State College student who moved to the U.S. from Ethiopia four years ago, found the students from Ethiopia.

Mesfin, 22, knows how difficult it is for those students to get an education. If it wasn't for a family from the U.S. that chose to pay for her education in Ethiopia and recently adopted her, she said that she would probably be on the street.

"Without education, there is no hope," she said. "Life is just about survival."

In Grocki's classroom, the Boynton High students have their photos displayed on large poster boards next to the photos of each student they are sponsoring overseas.

Seeing the photos of the students they are sponsoring had a profound effect on the Boynton High students.

"It made it real," said Herold Altidor Jr., an 18-year-old senior. "You can see the pain in their eyes."

For Caprisha Hendrix, also an 18-year-old senior, hearing about her student overseas put things into perspective.

"We really take education for granted," she said. "When I wake up, I want to stay in bed, but they wake up at the crack of dawn ready to go to school."

Lake, who often comes to Boynton High to work with Grocki and the students, said that it's amazing to see what the program has given students already.

"It bridges nations," she said.

She and Grocki hope to expand the program to other schools in the Palm Beach County School District and eventually take it nationwide.
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