CES Kenya Alumni Honor Steven Hao
Written by Michael Frederiksen, President at Community Education Services (CES) Canada.
Steven Hao was born in Canada and now lives in Atlanta GA. He is a high school student with a strong aptitude for computer science and putting hockey pucks in the net. He recently placed second in a National FBLA Coding and Programming Competition. As a young boy who at age 11, he started raising awareness and funds for CES. 40 students have received education scholarships because of Stephen’s volunteer work.
Steven recently wrote: The 2020 Spring-Summer fresh vegetable season has ended. It has been quite a success fundraising for charity. From my home garden and selling to my neighbors during the Covid-19 lockdown, this season has been quite a journey. As families started staying home and with a shortage of fresh vegetables in supermarkets, my Mom and I decided to start selling fresh vegetables in our home garden to our neighbors. Throughout the season, we grew a variety of crops including our best-selling cucumbers, tomatoes, spinach, and mixed greens. We have also made a great impact in the community, providing seniors with free vegetables. Over the course of the season we raised $600 alone towards CES Canada, a charity helping kids in Kenya for education. This will help 3 Kenyan children to attend school.
News from CES Kenya Alumni Executive: "We wish to officially incorporate Steven Hao into the Alumni Group and our first honorary member who will work alongside the team to see how best we can contribute to the society. On Mashujaa Day October 20, 2020 we wish to express our thanks and tell Steven that to us, he is a HERO.
The following message was written by Allan Utumbi, (BSc Kisii University and CES Kenya Graduate 2014). “As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them.” John F Kennedy.
Your story has been written in many lives of the great CES Kenya hearts, something that will live to be preserved forever to be recalled by generations and generations to come. Our appreciation goes to you Steven Hao for the precious sacrifice you made in your lifetime to elevate lives of many. Living a better life is marked by celebrating other people’s success and the best friend is the one who sees opportunities in you when the rest are myopic on your challenges. We can boldly say that we are who we are because of efforts of people like you Steven, the sacrifices you made have seen us come this far.
We wish we could be writing to you time and again, we wish we could compose songs in praise of your name with the chorus all over with the name of Steven Hao and CESKenya/Canada at large. We wish we had the best audience to narrate about you but we are left to utter a phrase not once, not twice, not thrice but in the entirety of our lifetime, we shall say thank you for making the sacrifices you made in our lives.
William Arthur Ward said, “Feeling gratitude and not expressing it is like wrapping a present and not giving it.” If this was a present, CES Kenya Alumni has wrapped it for too long and this is the time we are presenting it to you, please accept our simple way of appreciating you dear one. The alumni are celebrating you from all over the country and the world at large since one of us through hearts of helping a needy child raise fees, secured a scholarship and she is doing her studies in China. The alumni are scattered all over the country also offering services in different areas of experience. I can assure you, they all have a lot to share about the support they got the education support programme. I want on behalf of them, to thank you very much for standing with us and we pray is that the supernatural being with whom we bow down for prayers extend your boundaries so that your pockets are even filled more. Words lone cannot express how we feel about you; I wish you could penetrate our hearts and think with us. You are a great man in our lives Steven Hao.
Allow me to join G .K. Chesterton who once said, “I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought, and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder.” The CES Kenya alumni believes in the philosophy that appreciation is a wonderful thing, it makes what is wonderful in others belong to us as well, we acknowledge that good that you have done in our lives and the strong foundation you created for us in abundance. We thank you and celebrate you Steven.
A real friend is one whom walks in when the rest of the world walk out. Despite not meeting us physically, you solely identified Kenya and valued the lives of hundreds of students who were at the verge of dropping out of school. We mention this few incidences not because we love mentioning that someone was about to drop out of school specifically; but, we mention them to insist that we really appreciate the timings and the purpose for such opportunities, thank you in abundance.
As I wind up, I want to reiterate our appreciation note by reminding the rest of the world that a true friend is someone who thinks that you are a good egg even though he knows that you are slightly cracked. Steven, you are an embodiment of a best friend, your heart is like diamonds, precious and rare. As William Shakespeare said, “I can know no other answer but make thanks, and thanks –– ever thanks.”
Visit here for Michael's original article on LinkedIn.