Pen Pal Story Picked Up

By Journalism Student

By Nancy K. Crevier

Karen King’s Reed Intermediate School (RIS) fifth grade class had a special visitor Thursday, June 21, when Allison Lee arrived to film for a series of stories about Ghana that she hopes to produce. Ms Lee is a desk assistant with NBC Nightly News and is taking a graduate course in journalism at New York University. She will be traveling to Ghana June 29 to August 3 to compile stories about that area and its people that she hopes will be picked up by NBC.com when she returns. Ms King’s class is pen pals with children from the Buduburam Refugee Camp in Ghana, and when Ms Lee googled “Ghana” for ideas, she came across the June 15 Newtown Bee article “Reed Students Raise Awareness Of Refugees In Ghana,” by Laurie Borst that profiled the pen pal project, which has also included collecting school supplies and raising funds to support the only free school in the Buduburam Refugee Camp.

Ms Lee was thrilled to discover the Ghana connection so close to Manhattan, where she lives and works, and contacted Ms King to meet with the class.

Last Thursday, Ms Lee interviewed class members about the letters they had written and received through the pen pal program this year, and spoke at length about the RIS program with Ms King, who will also be in Ghana this summer, from  July 30 through August 15.

Ms Lee hopes that her interaction with Ms King’s RIS class will be a starting point for her stories about Ghana. She will bring to Ghana footage of Ms King’s class to share with the Liberian pen pals and upon her return, will provide footage of the African pen pals to Ms King and her students.