June 2020
Helping Hands Working Hard for Educational Equality:
How a small group can make a big change
By Ruthanne Ashkar
““Aside from what we do normally to help the community, we have found the original purpose of Helping Hands shines through during this moment of crisis…Being an organization built on helping others when they are in need, we have found ways to lessen the burden.””
When Michigan’s schools were closed in the middle of March, high school student Adrianna Kallabat knew that Helping Hands, the nonprofit organization that she and her younger sister Gabriella had created, would have to adapt to remain viable.
Although the sisters attend different schools, Adrianna is currently an 11th grader at International Academy Central in Bloomfield Hills and Gabriella a ninth grader at Bloomfield Hills High School, it was a shared passion for addressing important global issues that inspired them to create the Helping Hands Club 18 months ago.
“When I was in 10th grade, my sister Gabriella and I were talking about things that we could really do to help the community. I had this project in class where there were different nonprofits that we were advocating for as a group,” said Adrianna. The group that proved to be the most effective advocates were able to donate $100 from the school pantry to the organization they represented. While discussing the project, the Kallabat sisters decided they should create a club that embodied all the ideals they had been discussing and Helping Hands was born.
Even though they attended different schools, Adrianna, current president of the Helping Hands Club, says that her sister Gabriella took on an essential role in the club’s creation process and spent a lot of time working with her to get it up and running at International Academy Central.
In the beginning, the Helping Hands Club focused on raising awareness of global issues at their partner schools by bringing in guest speakers and giving presentations to about 100 people at a time. Presentations typically included follow-up discussions and brainstorming sessions about how the issues might be addressed by the community. Adrianna says that their decision to focus mainly on education inequality was made after a guest speaker gave a presentation about it at her own school.
Before the need for social distancing made working with students one-on-one impossible, Adrianna says that the tutors of Helping Hands, close to a 50/50 ratio of male and female, visited their partner schools up to four times a week, giving not only assistance with academics, but also serving as mentors, role models and friends to their younger peers.
Adrianna says that even though Helping Hands club members had already been discussing the possibility of an online tutoring system prior to the pandemic, none of them really knew where to begin. “Right when this happened, we knew we needed to make a change now or how were we going to reach these kids later?” she said.
Since creating the online tutoring system, the original 97 tutors from Helping Hands have expanded to include approximately 250 volunteers and the organization is now accepting applications for individual online tutoring through their website.
“Aside from what we do normally to help the community, we have found the original purpose of Helping Hands shines through during this moment of crisis,” says Adrianna. “Being an organization built on helping others when they are in need, we have found ways to lessen the burden of this crisis.
“First, with P.E.A.C.E. Academy and Great Lakes Academy, two of the schools in Pontiac that we are partnered with, we are helping the preschool students at these schools to maintain their reading skills.” About 40 volunteers record videos of themselves reading children’s books at home which are then sent to families from partner schools to play for thei children.
“We have also created a pen pal system with over 200 letters written for the children at P.E.A.C.E. Academy (preschool). We have inspirational messages written and things that will brighten the days of students during this quarantine phase,” said Adrianna.
With the help of the Bloomfield Hills Board of Education, Helping Hands members and volunteer tutors are available to help students in their own community as well. Adrianna sympathizes with teachers who might be feeling overwhelmed and hopes their club’s tutoring services will help to alleviate some of the stress and isolation being felt by teachers and students alike.
“We also are planning a Virtual Spirit Week. We have connected with Bloomfield Student Leadership and are working to bring this to life.” To counter the negativity of social media pages that Adrianna says are filled with sad and fearful information, Helping Hands has asked students and their families to send 10-15 second video clips of themselves sharing what they love about their community that will be compiled into a larger video to be shared during Virtual Spirit Week.
The Kallabat sisters are especially proud of their fellow Chaldeans during these difficult days. As an immigrant community, they are all too familiar with hardship but also understand that love, support and generosity is what gets you through. “The Chaldean Community is absolutely amazing!” says Adrianna. “I want to share some bright news to our loving community during this time of fear and disease.”
Adrianna says that even though she looks forward to the time when Helping Hand’s tutors can meet with their young peers in person again, she is excited about how being online now has allowed them to connect with students from farther away. She also hopes that Helping Hands will someday expand beyond the borders of Michigan to other states and possibly other countries. In the meantime, the Kallabat sisters continue to stay busy at home.
“We recently formed a partnership with the Detroit Pistons, and our first project was to form a video for Teacher Appreciation Week together,” she told The Chaldean News. The video can be viewed on her YouTube channel, Adrianna Kallabat. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=n4Cfz8Tf_l8&t=1s.
Their most recent partnership project will be creating masks out of old Pistons t-shirts. “We will have over 300 sent to Helping Hands, and board members will gather on Tuesday (May 19, 2020), in correspondence with social distancing guidelines, and create the masks,” said Adrianna. The masks will then be sent back to the Detroit Pistons for distribution through local nonprofits that provide food for the community.
Anyone interested in requesting a tutor for their children can fill out an application on the Helping Hands website at helpinghandschange.org.