Love … one teacher at a time

Sometimes the simplest actions can have the most profound results, especially when they are done out of love.

Peggy Rogers never set out to change the world. She simply wanted to be a friend. But what started out as a friendship turned into a desire to help, which evolved into a deep connection with a place a world away and a tremendous journey of the heart.

Ten years after it was created, Rogers' Zambia Scholarship Fund is "improving the quality of life one teacher at a time," she says. In the decade since it was created, the Zambia Scholarship Fund has supported more than 756 high school students, 521 college students, and has created nearly a hundred jobs by paying graduated teachers to teach at rural village schools.

And while she is proud of those achievements, Rogers also knows it is just a "tiny drop in the bucket. The people of Zambia are the poorest of the poor. They have nothing."

The Zambia Scholarship Fund will celebrate its 10-year milestone and raise funds for its future on Thursday with a special event at Kingsbury Hall: a concert featuring country superstar Emmylou Harris. Special guest will be the Zambian ambassador to the United States.

"It's a big undertaking for us," says Rogers, since ZSF is a nonprofit, all-volunteer operation. "But we hope it will result in a big return; every penny we make beyond our expenses will go to the Scholarship Fund. There is such need."

Rogers' involvement with Zambia began half a lifetime ago, when she and her husband were struggling students at the University of Utah. To get extra money, they decided to sell an old black-and-white TV. The man who came to look at it was Zambian Nkosi Manjani, who thought the TV might help his lonely wife, Tansy.

Rogers went to visit Tansy the very next day, and what began as a novelty soon developed into a deep friendship that lasted long after the Manjanis left Utah and eventually returned to Zambia, where he could not get a job so he ended up in South Africa.

After years of correspondence, in 1999, Rogers had finally saved up enough money to visit the Manjanis. Just as she got there, Tansy heard that her mother, who still lived in Zambia, had died. Tansy could not return home, so Rogers decided she must go in her place.

Making her way alone across Africa to the remote village where Tansy had lived was no easy task. But being able to see at last the country she had heard about for so long was indeed meaningful. It also changed her.