Every year, Marymount raises money to send to an orphanage in Zimbabwe run by the RSHM. This year, on Friday, November 13, the School held a Denim Day as part of this fund-raising drive: students, faculty, and staff paid a donation for the privilege of wearing jeans to school for the day; all the money raised is sent to help the many thousands of hungry and homeless people in this ravaged country.
Zimbabwe is located in southern Africa between South Africa and Zambia. It encompasses 390,580 square kilometers, an area a little larger than Montana. The population is about 13 million, with 98% African, 1% mixed and Asian, and less than 1% white. Over 85% of the population is now 
unemployed, and four out of five Zimbabweans live below the poverty level. Five million people—nearly half the population of Zimbabwe—need food aid, one of the highest rates in the world. This is due to several rounds of severe droughts, a collapsed currency that has made fertilizer and other farm inputs expensive, ill-considered land distribution, and brutal pre- and post-election violence that has hurt rural populations.
Zimbabwe has the highest number of orphans in the world—nearly two million. Their parents have died from AIDS or tuberculosis. Three hundred and fifty children become orphans very day. Many doctors have fled Zimbabwe because of the government; thus, for every 10,000 people, there is only one doctor. Most clinics and hospitals have closed. The World Health Organization ranks Zimbabwe as the worst country in the world in terms of health care.
UNICEF has called for urgent action regarding Zimbabwe’s severe food crisis, its medical crisis, and to a lesser extent its education crisis. Marymount has responded to this call by raising on average $20,000 per year: the money, sent to an orphanage run by the Religious of the Sacred Heart of Mary, goes to feed the poor and hungry and to pay for the education of many children. Thank-you letters from these children often reach Sister Margaret Treacy at the orphanage: one, from a boy named Tafackwa Mhondiwa going to school in Zimbabwe’s capital Harare, reads, “I write this letter to you because I would like to thank you for paying my school fees. When the time came that you paid my school fees, I was feeling like I have my parents because of you. So God bless you. I think he will give you more days to live on earth. I will thank you with all my heart.”