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Globe Trotting
Gaining a Deeper Sense of Family Through Travel
By Jenn Director Knudsen
Goaded into action by what they saw, the Simon family, once back in this country, created scholarships so the Tanzanian children could get more than a primary-school education. And Ben, then a first-grader at a public elementary school, spearheaded a penny drive. He and his classmates collected 100,000 pennies; the kids' money went toward installing windows and fixing the roof at Sakila Elementary School.
The Simon children also saw leprosy victims while traveling through India and landmine victims in Cambodia. You can imagine, Simon says, how such experiences "change your perspective a little bit."
Simon's eldest, Alex, now a high school freshman, says traveling extensively and to the far-flung places he's gone with his family have indeed enriched his life and taught him to take very little for granted.
The family returned in April from a 10-day trip to Morocco. While there, Alex was particularly struck by just how fantastic a ball could be to the very underprivileged. "I was throwing around a ball with some Berber kids that lived in the small village in the Atlas Mountains I was staying in," says Alex, who now runs his own catering business with a friend. (His business venture is partially inspired by the various cuisines he's sampled around the world.) "These kids were genuinely enjoying playing with this one little ball more than I had seen people who had just received a multi-thousand-dollar computer or TV. I feel much more aware of people's situations in the rest of the world, and I also feel that it is my responsibility to do what I can to help people in less-fortunate situations around the world."
