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Gulliver Prep senior Kamal Kay-Ramos is the Prep’s Silver Knight nominee for Athletics.
Kay-Ramos plays water polo for Gulliver, along with his brothers Awwal and Hayaat.
The triplets created the Hayaaka Foundation early in high school to carry on their volunteer work in Nigeria. They started volunteering at a young age, and formalized it when they reached high school.
They got to Nigeria for summer vacation and while they are there, they work with five orphanages in two cities.
“At the beginning of the summer we go to the various orphanages and we ask the managers,” he says. “We ask what supplies they need. After that, we make up a schedule, organize and then we go back.”
At first, they go and play with the children and when they have more manpower, they get to work.
“We play with them, we read books with them, we help them with their homework,” he says. “We make cupcakes with them. We watch their shows over and over again. We play soccer.”
The children are taught in English.
Kay-Ramos says there are various ethnicities in Nigeria but English is taught in school. The boys, their cousins and their friends work with the kids in math, history and English.
In 2019, they added a weeklong water polo camp to introduce Nigerians to water polo.
Because of logistics, they worked with a private school who provided the boys. The teens provided the materials and supplies, the caps and the balls and made the goals on site.
While the boys were supposed to already be able to swim, Kay-Ramos says they had a swim camp for the first three or four days.
“After that, we started with treading, then passing, then shooting,” he says. “I worked with the goalies. The last day was scrimmage.”
He says there were a couple of kids that we really good at the game.
“Two of the kids got the MVP award,” he says.
After a week of coaching kids, he gained a lot of respect for his coaches. He also learned how to better communicate with others and express himself in a clearer manner. And, he learned how to be assertive because it helped in controlling the kids.
The experience overall was terrific and they had planned to do it again last winter break but couldn’t because of COVID.
“We are definitely planning to do it again,” he says.
He also feels that the children gained a lot from the camp.
“Water sports in general aren’t widely known in Nigeria,” he says. “We opened those avenues for them. I tried to impart as much of my skill as I could on them.”
He and his brothers still tutor kids in Nigeria online.
“Right now, we have around ten,” he says.
The foundation provided Wi Fi to the orphanages so they could stay in touch.
The Kay-Ramos brothers are still deciding on college and whether they will attend the same school or if they will go to different schools in the same region. What Kamal does know is that he wants to be an engineering major – either electrical or mechanical engineering.
Kay-Ramos is a member in the community service club SMILE and a member of the Gulliver Robotics team and participates in the competitions when they are held. He’s a member of the National Honor Society for Computer Science.
One of the classes Kay-Ramos enjoys is Japanese, which he first took in sixth grade.
“I like it so much because it’s a different way to communicate,” he says.
Linda Rodriquez Bernfeld
