Headmaster Edith Gyameoh, far right, stands with her young charges outside of their school in the rural town of Somanya, Ghana. Children from East Liberty saved their pennies to help the West African school rebuild and feed its students.

By Ervin Dyer Last summer, the pennies came in crumbled-up newspaper, coffee cans and wrapped in cellophane tied in a knot.

The dimes, nickels and quarters came, too.

They all began to stack up in a room at the Lincoln Elementary Technology Academy. The donors were the little brown faces of more than 100 students, their teachers and friends.

In the end, $177.74 was collected. A jumble of coins almost too heavy for me to lift into the bank.

		Ervin Dyer is a Post-Gazette staff writer (edyer@post-gazette.com).

"Where'd you get all these pennies?" the bank teller asked.

I smiled and told her heaven.

Well, almost.

They came from little angels: the children in East Liberty giving what they could to help the children of West Africa.

Too often inner-city black children are on the receiving end of programming that categorizes them as poor and needy. The lessons in swimming and art and reading and writing are well-intentioned and I'm sure do plenty of good.

But, damn, it sucks the soul out of a child to be constantly reminded that you have nothing to give. Especially when, all across the world, the only people splashed into the headlines for their largesse are those who have billions to give.

In the United States, no matter which end of the economic spectrum they fall on, I think children should believe they have something to give. They only need adults to show them how.

There is poor America. And, then there is poor Africa, a place where children don't have toilets and die in the millions from diseases that their counterparts in America have never even heard of.

From what American children pay to rent a movie, download a ringtone or spend at the corner market, they can change a life. We need to let our children know this.

I did.

I told the children at Lincoln Elementary they could help children whose school had no windows or blackboard. That they could help feed young students who had to walk miles, some with no shoes. And, they responded. On several occasions, their parents brought in pennies because the children went home and talked about making a difference.

I first went to Africa 10 years ago. It saved my soul. I was struggling with my own demons of worth and value when I set foot in Ghana. One pitch-black night, I crossed a field and stumbled upon a circle of young men. They were making proclamations in their native tongue that sounded like nothing to me except babble. Then, I hear the word "Jesus" thrown through the dark into my heart. I had wandered upon a prayer circle.

Noticing me, the gentlemen began to speak English and invited me into the circle to pray. Here, we are, in the midst of a mud field and the first prayer lifted up is a petition that the Lord bless me and my country.

I am touched forever. I can no longer be the visitor to Africa who only returns for masks and for memories. I must seek a greater connection.

A year later, I got my chance. A few months after another trip to Ghana, my friend Sammy, a young man who adopted me during a monthlong stay in a rural community, e-mailed me that the fall rains had washed away portions of his mother Edith's school.

I am no Oprah, Bill or Warren, but I had to respond. The first year, I simply begged my friends and family for small donations: we sent over $700 to rebuild the school. I later contacted the Poise Foundation and established the Genesis Fund, a tax-free account that builds an endowment and distributes cash about once a year to the school and to other struggling projects in Africa. No, it's not a billion dollars, but pennies do add up and my friends have been extremely supportive. In the three years I've been begging for their change, not one has turned me down.

My giving has its roots deep in the traditions of philanthropy among black folks.

Mostly, we give to our churches. We give to our neighbors. In my hometown, 100 years ago, Maggie Lena Walker, a former washerwoman, collected pennies and created one of the South's first black banks -- The St. Luke Penny Savings and Loan.

What I learned growing up was that giving to family and friends was not only right, it was necessary. As I progressed through my career, I was increasingly called upon to be my brother's keeper. I paid my aunt's car note. When my best friend floundered with his drug addiction, I paid his rent. When my college friend needed help with her niece, my doors swung wide open.

I'm sure I helped -- for a moment -- but nothing changed. I did nothing to cure my aunt's pitiful spending habits, I did nothing to halt my friend's drug addiction and I did little that touched the life of my friend's niece. It seemed the efforts and the cash were sucked into some giant black hole.

I may have done nothing to change their lives, but the giving for me was transforming. I learned to avoid giving to people and situations that were already dead. Who wants their gifts to be wasted? I would not cast my pennies before swine.

In Africa, I saw children dying because they had no food. I saw the death blows of AIDS and malaria, twin weapons of mass destruction, up close. I couldn't save the world. But I could make a difference.

Poor old me. The guy who struggles to keep his broken-down Jeep on the road. Who can never seem to pay a bill on time. Who longs to have his home professionally painted. I would make a difference.

I was fearful. I had no personal experience with building a charitable foundation -- or changing the world.

As a child, growing up in public housing, my five siblings and I, and dozens of our neighbors, went to the programs that told us we had nothing.

I was used to being rescued, not to being the rescuer.

When I was growing up in Richmond,Va., the only model of those who changed the world were people who were rich or white or both. I thought this because there were plenty of statues on Virginia's grand boulevards dedicated to the good deeds of the Lees and the Jeffersons and the Marshalls. They were a constant reminder that only the rich and powerful can give.

We can't let today's headlines allow that perception to repeat itself.

Every day we should teach society's forgotten children to imagine that they can care, and that through their caring and through their gifts they can change the world. One person at a time.

It was wonderful to see the children at Lincoln Elementary.

For five weeks, they saved. Proud of what they did, many went home and asked their parents to give, too.

They only needed someone to ask them.

So, I did -- first asking them to count their blessings, then asking them to count their pennies.