The newly released book “The Pencil Project” by Richlands Elementary School teacher James Ryan Orr is partly fiction but the story that inspired it began two years ago with an assignment for his fourth-grade class.

Orr challenged his students to find a need somewhere in the world and come up with a plan to help make it better.

They did and one particular project has grown into an ongoing service project and is the basis of Orr’s book.

Student Colleen Newbold, now a sixth-grader at Trexler Middle School, created the Pencil Project and continues to collect pencils to send to children in Africa who don’t have access to pencils and other basic school supplies.

It wasn’t mandatory that the students given the Change the World assignment turn their ideas into action but many of them did. They all had an impact, Orr said, but what Colleen set in motion with the Pencil Project has grown into something special.

“It was just the kind of heart and spirit she had,” Orr said of Colleen’s initiative and desire to pursue the project. “She felt the need to follow through with the project and it has become what it has.”

The excitement of the project still shows as Colleen tells how it all started.

When the class was presented with the Change the World assignment, a story her mom had told her a few weeks earlier quickly came to mind.

Her mom, Ivy Newbold, a teacher at Richlands Primary School, had shared with her the experience of a professor who had traveled to Africa and saw groups of as many as seven students having to share one pencil.

The image stuck in her mind and was immediately what she thought of as her fourth-grade class was told about the Change the World assignment.

“I said ‘Mom, this is what I want to do for a project.’ That was on a Friday and I started the research and about two hours later I had started the foundation of all this,” she said.

Why the Pencil Project?

“I felt like we take some of the small things for granted here, and how people in other countries don’t always have the privilege of the things we do,” Colleen said.

Pencils may be something students in American classrooms use without giving them much thought but Colleen sees them as an essential part of learning.

“They are important because they help you get an education,” she said. “I know when I learn it is harder to remember stuff if I don’t write it down.”

Her mom recalls her excitement from the moment she got in the car after school that day she received the Change the World assignment.

“We got home and she kept asking how are we going to do it? She already had a plan,” said Mrs. Newbold.

Colleen was at the kitchen table with her mom doing research that afternoon.

Her mom put in an e-mail to Orr to be sure her daughter was moving in the right direction with the project, not expecting to hear back from the after-hours email so soon.

“He emailed right back and by Saturday the project was full-blown,” she recalls.

The next week she was invited to speak during the school’s morning announcements. She told her classmates about her plan to collect pencils for students in Africa and invited them to donate pencils for the project.

Her first pencil collection drive was off and donation boxes were put up around Richlands Elementary, Richlands Primary, and at her family’s church.

The response was beyond what they expected.

“There were well over 10,000 pencils. We kind of quit counting after that,” Mrs. Newbold said.

With six full-size boxes of pencils in hand, Colleen also had a plan for getting them to Africa.

During her research, Colleen learned about the organization Develop Africa and now partners with the nonprofit charity to make sure the pencils she collects gets to the students who need them.

She saw their website and read the stories about children in Africa who had benefited from their work, and knew Develop Africa out of Johnson City, Tennessee, was who she wanted to work with.

“They had a lot of good information and I just felt like they were the one I should pick,” Colleen said.

Just like Colleen knew what she wanted to make happen, Orr knew there was a bigger story to be told.

For him, the assignment was also a lesson in how acts of kindness, large and small, can have a ripple effect, inspiring another person to make change as well.

“Right now, there is no telling where those pencils have gone and what those kids (receiving them) may be capable of, and (Colleen) has had a hand in that,” Orr said.

Orr never planned to write a book but the Pencil Project and the potential he sees that can come from it, prompted him to write.

“This idea would not let me rest; I had to write it down,” Orr said. “I had no idea of it becoming a book, it was just a story I wanted to write.”

He kept writing and soon the book followed.

The book begins with the story of Colleen’s project and transitions to the story of the fictional character, Nadege, a young girl in Africa who receives one of the pencils and is inspired to pursue an education and becomes a doctor. She travels to the United States to advance her medical studies with the plan of returning to her home in Cameroon, where there are not enough qualified doctors and to help people like her father, who had died after a massive stroke.

“I imagined those pencils getting into the right hands and unlocking the potential of brilliant minds,” Orr said.

With permission from Colleen, who is a character in the book, as well as permission from Develop Africa, to use their name, a book evolved.

And the Pencil Project, which began as a project by a student and sparked the book by her teacher, seemed meant to be.

Not only has Develop Africa backed the book and the Pencil Project, there have been a number of occurrences along the way that they can’t really explain.

When Orr first contacted Develop Africa about permission to use their name, and before they had read the book, they found out that those pencils collected by Colleen had gone to Cameroon, the country in Africa featured in the book.

When he first contacted the Newbold family about turning the story of the Pencil Project into a book, they were, coincidentally, driving home from making a delivery of pencils to Develop Africa.

After reading the book for the first time, Colleen looked up the meaning of the name Nadege, which she found was Hope.

Only recently did Orr notice that the girl illustrated on the cover of the book is writing the word “Hope” on a piece of paper.

“There are a lot of things with this project that there is no other way to explain it than there is a higher power behind it,” Orr said.

And while the book is written so that children can read it, Colleen and her teacher say the story is one that they hope will inspire others.

“Even small things can bring big results,” Colleen said when asked what she learned from the project.

The two will be on hand Saturday at the Richlands Branch Library from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. for the launch of the book, which has been released on Amazon, and book signing. 

Books will be available for $10, with proceeds going to Develop Africa. There will also be a box set up for the collection of pencils and school supplies to go to classrooms in Africa.

Information on the project, book and how to purchase the book can be found at the website pencilproject.org and on The Pencil Project Facebook page.

Full Article at - http://www.jdnews.com/news/20171214/student-project-inspires-teachers-book

by: Reporter Jannette Pippin, The Daily News-Jacksonville, NC,  Jannette.Pippin@JDNews.com or 910-382-2557.