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Whiz Kids: Creve Coeur Area High School Students Help Haiti

Priory and Chaminade students use soccer to spread goodwill

Each week, Creve Coeur Patch will seek suggestions from readers for individual kids, youth groups, teens, and even sports teams that wow us with their accomplishments. We want to hear about these amazing children and teens and select one each week to highlight, except this week, when there are two!

This Week's Whiz Kids:

Charles Dubuque Jr., a junior at & Brad Lenke, a junior at

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Key To Awesomeness:

Dubuque's grandfather went to Milot, Haiti in 1986 for six months to perform operations in a hospital named Hospital Sacre Coeur. That trip helped spawn a  foundation to support the hospital, going by the acronym CRUDEM (Center for the Rural Development of Milot). Since then, Sacre Coeur has grown to be the largest  hospital in Northern Haiti.

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Last month Dubuque, Jr. went to Haiti to do mission work with his parents, Lenke, Lenke's mother, Beth, and others. Dubuque told Patch he wanted to bring something to children there to play with and keep them out of trouble. Soccer came to mind. Just weeks before the trip, he collected about 40 balls, funds to buy more, along with four pumps.

Three days into their trip, the group distributed the equipment, and even though he knew the kids found soccer popular, he was still surprised by the reaction.

"What I did not see coming was the amount of joy it brought to some of the kids. You could see it in their eyes. It touched me to see the kind of excitement it brought and how much fun all of the people had playing with us. I think it caught a lot of the people off guard, but I’m sure it was a pleasant surprise to say the least. If I had to take anything away from my trip it would be the look on this one boy’s eyes when I singled him out, picked him up and took him over to our jeep to personally hand him a ball. He smiled, hugged me and ran back home to show his family. That was the kind of reaction I was looking for."


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