Children Changing the World

How do 12 teenagers build a school with their own hands in only three weeks? To start, they got only a 30-minute construction lesson. Then, with the help of Free The Children leaders and other community members, it was off to work. "It was kind of scary to think, 'We don't have anything but what we were taught in the last half-hour,'" Andrew says. "I kept wondering, 'Wouldn't it be a good idea to invest in a tractor?'"

Haley says she was in disbelief. "We were 12 kids, and we were supposed to build from scratch with picks and shovels and wheelbarrows? I literally said, 'This is a joke.'"

But as time passed, the project got easier, and it soon became clear that the Ambassadors would get the job done. "If we came all the way to Kenya to build a school and we didn't finish building it, I'd be so disappointed in myself," Ryan says.

Craig says the project came together because the students worked side by side with members of the community. "Mamas from the community were helping, fathers left their fields, even kids who wanted to go to the school," he says. "Every single day, laying bricks and seeing those walls rise and eventually hoisting up the roof."