Barton Open Student Volunteers, Organizes Donations For Orphanage

Not many 13-year-olds volunteer at remote orphanages in Honduras, then turn around and organize their schoolmates to donate their shoes to Honduran children.

That’s how Michelle Kohnen-Norton, a quiet student at Southwest Minneapolis’ , has spent her winter.

Her mother, Kelly Kohnen, volunteers every year at a remote orphanage in Honduras, providing free dental care with a group called the International Health Service of Minnesota. The elder Kohnen wanted her daughter to see for herself just how other people on this planet lived, so last year they traveled together to the heart of Central American highlands.

Remote doesn’t begin to describe the orphanage, called House of Hope. Just to get to there, the mother-daughter pair had to take a two-day succession of planes, buses, and ferries deep into the forest—and the country’s poverty. Honduras is one of the poorest countries on earth, and some of those in the orphanage are there simply because their mothers can’t afford to feed them, Kohnen said.

When the pair arrived, many of the orphanage’s youngest kids crowded around, “wanting nothing more than to be picked up” and shown affection and attention, as the mother described it.

“It was emotionally draining,” Kohnen-Norton said. “There was this girl at the orphanage who had been raped by her uncle. She had a kid and she was 12. There’s, you know, such a big difference between her and someone who was 12 in my school. She was kind of quiet—morose in a way. Other kids would try to interact with her and she couldn’t, or wouldn’t.”

Kohnen-Norton noted bright spots during her week at the orphanage.

“One day, my mom took the baby (of the 12-year-old mother) to give it a check-up, she said. “She didn’t understand English, so I had to point to the markers and stuff to ask her if she wanted to draw pictures with the rest of the kids. Then she smiled at me and eventually started drawing pictures with me. It made me happy that she was doing something other than just having to take care of the baby.”

Confronted with the scale of human tragedy in the communities around the orphanage, Kohnen-Norton wanted to contribute, even if only in a small way. After several weeks after returning from Honduras, she hit upon the idea of shoes.

“They started a soccer team down there,” she said. “A lot of times, they play (barefoot) on a field that’s not well taken care of. There’s broken glass and stuff there.”

Kohnen-Norton sent word through the Barton Open student council in mid-December that she was collecting shoes for the orphanage. Soon, she had over 200 donated pairs on her hands to scrub clean.

“I told them ‘no more shoes!’ but they kept giving and giving,” Kohnen-Norton said with a laugh.

Box by box, she and her mom have been shipping the shoes to Honduras, including a consignment the mother will take herself this week, on her next annual visit.

Volunteering and collecting shoes have inspired Kohnen-Norton to deepen her involvement with House of Hope and with international aid. So far, she’s helped raise money for earthquake relief in Haiti and for school supplies in Honduras, and she's trying to figure out how to help build solar ovens for the community near the orphanage. These ovens would help combat the endemic emphysema that comes from the area’s poorly ventilated indoor wood stoves.

“I was really proud—she did the whole thing by herself,” the elder Kohnen said of her daughter. 

Editor's Note: Thanks to Barton Open teacher Sue Buettgen for helping us get photos of the shoes!