Several teams displayed an outstanding helping focus in their websites. A few examples are listed below:
GVC09-16, winner of the Grand Prize in the secondary school category, lead by Anne Lambert, John Muir School, USA (CA); Lakshmi Srinivas, St. Mark's Senior Secondary Public School, India; and Hiroyuki Fujita, Wako Kokusai High School, Japan; designed their website around the idea of “Service before Self”. The site emphasizes organizations and individuals that have made their vision and passion in life. The site continues to focus on the students roles in service before self, highlighting KIVA, Flag ceremony, SOS Village and Social Services at St. Mark’s.
GVC09-01, winner of the Grand Prize in the primary school category, was examples of their website “Save Earth”. Students at Percy Julian Middle School, Oak Park, Illinois; St. Mark’s Senior Secondary School, New Delhi, India; and Washington West Elementary School, Olean, New York, all participated in recycling programs, blanket drives, food drives, food pantries, tree plantings, composting and herbal gardens.
GVC09-05, winner of the Third Prize and Exceptional Helping Focus Awards in the primary school category, was put into action as they wanted to do something to help with the relief effort in Haiti. The “Imaginary Island” team came up with the idea of “One Island Community Helping Another” and found the Haiti Houses project. Students spent their lunchtime recess creating pins from simple materials to sell at school functions. The team was able to create and sell over 250 Haiti House Pins to raise over $1050.00 to donate to the relief efforts.
GVC09-12, “Amazing Oceans”, winner of the Exceptional Creativity Award in the secondary school category contributed to the relief effort in Haiti. Point Option High School, a school of 75 students, raised $925 in seven days by creating themes for each day of the week, in which students could donate money to participate in. Themes included hat day, pasta and pajama day, cell phone and hot dog day and crazy sock day.
GVC09-02 team member Long Beach Middle School, USA (MS), , Second Prize winner in the primary school category, decided to do something to help other people who had experienced the results of a natural disaster. Students at Long Beach have experienced the disaster of nature with Hurricane Katrina and remembered how others had helped them. For one week, the proceeds of the five school based businesses donated 100% of their profits to the fundraiser.GVC09-04, students at Oasis Charter Middle School participated in the Teens for Jeans program sponsored by Aeropostale. To encourage school wide participation, the GVC class designed posters to hang around the school. Students went from classroom to classroom and collected 297 pairs of jeans to donate to teens in Lee County, Florida and to teens in Haiti.
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Charles Elsey
Program Manager
Global Virtual Classroom
