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Eddie Minor with the soccer balls he collected to donate during his family’s trip to Tanzania.
Photo provided by the Minor family
While in Tanzania, Annie Minor provided materials and ran craft stations. One of them involved making a canvas bag craft for each child to take home.
Photo provided by the Minor family
BIRMINGHAM — During Birmingham Public Schools’ midwinter break, the Minor family traveled to Tanzania to deliver donations two of the Minor siblings collected for their Eagle Scout projects.
Groves High School junior Eddie Minor and freshman Annie Minor are both Eagle Scout candidates from Troop 1699. They each found ways to incorporate their interests into their respective projects.
Eddie Minor wanted to do something that involved his passion for sports. He collected 120 soccer balls, as well as team pinnies, cones and mesh bags, for children in Tanzania. He was able to collect these items through troop outreach and a pop can drive.
Annie Minor’s love for art is reflected in her project, for which she gathered art supplies, including 318 braid kits and 562 beaded bracelet kits. She also donated rainbow loom sets. She collected these items through an Amazon wishlist, Venmo and donations.
Bingham Farms Elementary School Principal Joanna McKinney helped connect the Minors to Swahili Fikia Initiatives.
“The scout is responsible for organizing, leading, facilitating questions for people, helping them understand what’s going on, and that’s one of the big impacts for the Eagle Scouts,” Trail to Eagle Coach Stuart Wooters said.
Traveling to Tanzania
Eddie Minor said every day was a little bit different in Tanzania.
They spent one day taking underprivileged children to a private school to play on the playground and do art projects. Annie Minor talked about the experience of doing art projects and connecting with the kids.
“There was always that language barrier. But we connected,” Annie Minor said.
The other days in Tanzania were spent visiting the children’s schools and delivering donations of sports equipment and art supplies.
A family of Eagle Scouts
Both Eddie and Annie have been in Scouts since elementary school. They are following in the footsteps of their father, Matt Minor, who is an Eagle Scout.
“All of us can do it together and have fun,” Matt Minor said, adding that there are not many things kids in a wide age range can do together that they are all legitimately interested in.
Since they traveled as a family, the Minor parents were able to witness their children’s leadership and other efforts towards the project.
“The experience was really transformational. It was nice to see these kids firsthand impacting so many kids that are across the world and in many cases, less fortunate than us,” Matt Minor said.
He added how impressed they were to see the way their children were able to connect with the kids, even though they weren’t speaking the same language.
Emily Minor, Eddie and Annie’s mother, said, “it was really cool, from my perspective, to see my kids utilizing all these skills that they’ve learned in Scouts and really putting them to use for a big project that had a lot of impact.”
The next steps
Though the Minor siblings are not Eagle Scouts yet, they are close. After returning home, they began filling out their workbook, which they describe as a project report.
Once that is submitted, they go in front of an Eagle Scout Board of Review, where they will present their project and be asked questions about their entire Scouting career.
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