CORNELIUS – At the beginning of the school year, Grace Covenant Academy decided to support the African Children’s Project, a nonprofit organization raising funds to build a children’s home for HIV/AIDS orphans in Embu, Kenya.

During the course the year, the students, staff and families raised $5,013.

As a final practical lesson in their mission work, children at the academy carried 1- and 5-gallon jugs of water from a pond near their school at 17301 Statesville Road up a hill to the main school building. During the exercise, Melanie Freshour, executive director of African Children’s Project, and school staff explained that people in many remote Kenyan villages walk miles to get clean drinking water and then carry the water home.

Freshour’s children attend Grace Covenant Academy, and she coordinated the lesson with school Assistant Director Amber Cavazos and Grace Covenant Pastors Jason Yon and Jeff Allen.