For the three weeks before the holiday break, sixth graders worked diligently to make pens for kids they don’t even know.

Middle school teacher Patricia Miller came up with the idea, after talking with one of her old service sorority sisters, who is currently working in the Peace Corps in Luwingu, Zambia. Miller’s friend asked if she could have the kids write to the 200-some children in the village’s school in which she is working, and include something to teach them about American culture. But Miller and her students wanted to add a little something extra, to surprise the kids.

“Students [thought it] would be great to make the fancy pens with floral tape and a flower on the end,” Miller said in an earlier text. “We decided to make all 200 students a handmade flower pen.”

Miller said the students will also be regularly exchanging letters with their Zambian pen pals, but that there will be a “variety” of writing levels the Wareham students will see, because “they are not as advanced, education-wise.”

“I found out they don’t have any electricity,” Miller said. “This is a very, very poor community we are dealing with.”

In addition to the pens, Miller said her students made Christmas cards, and collected enough candy canes for 200 students, in order to share a bit of America’s culture and food around this time of year. She said the students all agreed they didn’t want to just focus on one classroom in the village, and leave out the rest of the school.

“It was really nice to see [the students] working together like this,” Miller said. “They stayed after school, and there were a variety of kids who wanted to help out.”