The seven-year-old sat in church in tears.
Cameron Northern was hearing about orphans in Uganda whose parents died in the HIV epidemic and how the country’s education system required tuition payments from all students. She learned how those orphans didn’t have regular access to education, food or healthcare.
That pretty pink bike she had been saving for could wait, she decided.
Northern donated the contents of her piggy bank to those orphans who couldn’t go to school and didn’t have enough food or healthcare.
“I realized that the pink bike I wanted wasn’t as important as another kid having an education or food,” she said.
That day in church has inspired years of helping orphans as Northern, now a freshman at Greenwood Christian Academy, has devoted more than half her life to raising money to send to the impoverished orphans.
For her work, she has won the 2016 National Power of Children Award, through the Children’s Museum of Indianapolis.
The award is annually presented to students in grades 6 through 11 who work to improve society. Other award winners are from California, New Jersey, Indianapolis and Fishers. A former guidance counselor at her previous school in Martinsville recommended her for the award.
Since her first donation, she has raised more than $25,000 and sent it to the Nyaka AIDS Orphan Project, a program that gets education money to children orphaned by AIDS.
As a young child, she wrote letters to her family and friends asking for donations. That first effort yielded more than $800. She then sold pens with duct tape flowers perched on top and swam, biked and ran in a triathlon with family and friends sponsoring her to raise money.
A T-shirt she made featuring 30 Ugandan orphans who wanted to have the money to attend school yielded more than $13,000 in donations as her orthodontist, teachers, friends and soccer team donated enough money to send 36 orphans to school for one year.
This year she is asking for donations in a “100 in the 100” campaign that has her hoping for $100 in donations daily in the last 100 days of the year. She is ahead of schedule in that endeavor.
That day in church, God spoke to Northern and told her that helping these orphans is what she needed to do with her life.
She answered the call.
“I cried to my Mom and Dad because it was so sad,” she said. “I really felt like God was touching my heart.”
In an effort to get donations and to inspire others to help the world, she made a presentation to her classmates at Greenwood Christian Academy. She wears the T-shirt whenever she can, hoping people will ask about the cause and be inspired to donate, Ali Northern, her mom, said.
Her story of a young girl helping children halfway across the world is part of the mission, with others realizing they can help too, said Ali Northern.
“Even a 7-year-old girl can do this,” she said. “If she can, anyone can.”
Now she is starting to see what the donations she has been working for are going toward.
A class she helped in Uganda wished her a happy 14th birthday in a video. And her family is planning a trip to Nyaka this summer so she can paint classrooms and see the students that she has helped.
“I will continue for the rest of my life raising money for these children,” she said.
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Cameron Northern has won an award for raising money for orphans in Uganda.
If you would like to donate to the cause, please e-mail [email protected]
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