GVC Helping Focus

Giving for the Holidays

2012-01-10T15:22:00.000-05:00

Students at Percy Julian Middle School in Oak Park Illinois share the spirit of giving.
http://abclocal.go.com/wls/video?id=8460217

GVC Students Give Back to the World Community!

2011-06-08T09:14:00.002-04:00

Patch.com highlights Mann students' gift to Hephzibah and donation of their GVC prize money to the orphanage in Cote d'Ivoire. These students, very dedicated to "lacing up the digital divide" donated their $1000 first prize money to the orphanage for technology in their library.

In a similar move, teacher and students of Denmark Empowerment Charter School in Denmark, Wisconsin, USA, donated their first place $1000 prize money to Give Something Back International Foundation for the "build a school" in Haiti project.

Cranes for Kids: Giving Hope to the Children of Japan

2011-05-05T14:40:00.001-04:00

In Japanese culture, cranes are a powerful symbol of health and well-wishes. In fact, the Japanese people believe that anyone who makes 1,000 origami cranes will have a wish granted. While we can’t grant every wish, we can make a difference. Students in the Lincoln Technology Club made 95 PAPER CRANES to send to the Oshkosh B'Gosh company. The company in turn will be donating a NEW article of clothing to the earthquake and tsunami survivors for every paper crane they receive- that's 95 pieces of clothing from the Lincoln Tech Club!

GVC Students in the News

2011-05-03T11:53:00.002-04:00

Students at Horace Mann elementary school make and sell lanyards to help "lace up the Digital Divide". Read about their entrepreneurial efforts to bring the orphanage into the 21st century.

Reaching Out To Our Community

2011-03-31T00:51:00.016-04:00

by: Aline Teresa L. Mendoza - PHL

This is my second year in GVC and this time our team mates are from Thailand and US and we are GVC 10-26. The entire duration of this project was really very amazing. The most amazing part about joining GVC is that they are teaching us about giving ourselves to others. They encourage us to give something back to our community.

Our school this year have the same goal, the entire school year, our school's administrators encouraged every year level to do community outreach work, and the entire school studentry responded. Our fourth year students helped the nearby community by donating food, and clothes to families who experienced fire. Our third year students, went to different public schools and teach elementary students.

While our second year students, went to Gawad Kalinga to help in building of houses. Then our first year students went to different orphanages to donate food and clothings. Sadly, our documentations on the above activities were very poor, so I do not have any pictures so we could share our experiences.

We also came up with an idea of selling Filipino food during our YMSAT (Science) week (Jan 24 to Jan 29) to raise funds for the godparent program of our school's foundation. We did it during our Science week, because there would be a lot of students and teachers coming in from different schools. The godparent program of our foundation is to really help financially the poorest of our students. Unfortunately, we did not raised a lot of money, but at least the intention was there. While we were raising money, we were also talking to different students and teachers from other schools regarding GVC and its objectives.

Recently, we just had our Students Get Artsy and Takbuhan Pisay. In Students Get Artsy, selected students of our school including my GVC students taught arts (performing and visual arts) to different public schools in Metro Manila.

While Takbuhan Pisay, is a fun run to raise funds for Parent Teacher Association to support various projects of our school. Several of my GVC students also joined in the fun run.

I would repeat everything next school year and get to meet different people again or maybe reconnect with old friends in GVC. :)

Giving Back

2011-01-31T09:21:00.002-05:00

A group of students from a "charm School" group in New Jersey (USA) are helping me to fight against prematurity. Personally, I lost 4 children due to prematurity complications, and my twins were also premature. This medical mystery has effected me greatly. My twins are now healthy, strong 4 year olds. This year I will walk in the March of Dimes, Walk for Babies. You can learn more about my story and how we are giving back to this cause at: http://wellinswalkforbabies.blogspot.com

ECO CLUB -- SMS Janak Puri, India

2010-12-09T01:21:00.016-05:00

Eco- Club “Vasudha” of St. Marks Sr. Sec Public School, Janakpuri has been working tirelessly since 1999 to add up its contribution to improve the challenging environmental conditions. The coordinators and club members have undertaken various environmental friendly activities like tree plantation, campaigns against noise and air pollution and the awareness campaigns amongst the society like “No Plastic for me”, “Say no to crackers” and the most important one the “Cleanliness Drive”.

Keeping in mind “COMING TOGETHER IS A BEGINNING, KEEPING TOGETHER IS PROGRESS,WORKING TOGETHER IS SUCCESS”, the club has joined hands with The Art of Living in its Clean Delhi- NCR Drive campaign for which the school has adopted A-3 block of Janakpuri for spreading awareness to keep the surroundings clean.

Reported by Vinayak Goyal

Working For A Cause -- SMS Janak Puri, India

2010-12-08T21:18:00.045-05:00

“A SURE WAY FOR ONE TO LIFT HIMSELF UP IS BY HELPING TO LIFT SOMEONE ELSE”

Whenever there is a call for Social and community work SMS Janak Puri has never left any stone unturned . We are aware of our social responsibilities and are trying to lend a helping hand to those less privileged than us.

SOS Villages of India’ is a NGO which is a non-profitable organization. It helps children, those who bravely faced various natural calamities like flood, earthquakes and terrorism. SOS Villages of India provide a complete home to these children.

Helping Hand Lend BY SMS , Jnakpuri………….

A Cheque was handed over by our Director Mrs Anjali Aggarwal to Mrs. Seema Jairath, State Coordinator, SOS Villages of India.

A contribution of Rs. 1,34,172 was given by SMS family to Mr. Harpreet Singh Deputy Head , Publicity and Fund Raising (SOS) by our honourable chairman Mr. T.P Aggarwal.

A visit to SOS Village at Bawana

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The students interacted with village Students and learnt the way they lead their lives. They visited their respective homes, shared much information, played Cricket and sketched some drawings with them. Our students also gave some gifts to them which brought smiles on their faces. It was a wonderful experience to cherish.

“GOONJ” AN N.G.O, WORKING FOR THE UNDERPRIVILEGED CHILDREN

Our school participated in a 3 day interaction programme called “PRATIBIMB-2009” organized by GOONJ, an NGO and received the third prize amongst 18 schools in the “Seeking Solutions” event for presenting a mime on rural problems. The mime depicted how the unscientific beliefs of illiterate rural people in “quacks” & “ojhas” can ruin them.

The school received a trophy and a certificate for their presentation.

S.M.S Faculty contributed items such as stationary, woollens, soft toys in large bulk for the underprivileged children this year as well. It is a regular feature of the school which involves the students from all the classes right from class I to class XII making them realize their moral responsibility towards the underprivileged children and thus sensitizing values of consideration and humanity amongst young hearts.

HELP AGE INDIA
Under the aegis of Help Age India, the students of our school contributed Rs. 67,738/- in order to support the senior citizens of our country, When Bihar was devastated by floods, the children of our school contributed 1050 Kgs. of rice and 50 Kgs. of pulses to help the people in their hour of crisis. The students of SMS contributed an amount of Rs. 67,738 towards the “School Education Cum Fund Raising Programme” under the aegis of Helpage India given by our Chairman Mr. T.P Aggarwal to Manjeet Singh , Sr. Manager of Helpage India.

Our school is closely associated with NGOs Prerna Niketan & Muskaan. Prerna Niketan is a voluntary organization working for the physically challenged people. Muskaan is a vocational training centre where intellectually challenged and differently able children are trained.
Diwali Mela’s are organized by the NGO’s like Prerna NIketan and Muskan in our school on regular basis. The students are encouraged to buy their products as the proceeds from them go for a noble cause.

Reported by Vinayak Goyal

HELPING FOCUS SMSMB

2010-11-24T12:54:00.004-05:00

It had all the ingredients of a cultural festival - music, dance, and even a rock band; what set it apart was the fact that the event has been conceived and executed entirely by visually impaired people.Aimed at sensitising people about those who are unable to see, visually-challenged anchors, dancers and rock-band artists came together to put up a show at Pragati Maidan here on Sunday evening to mark World Sight Day."India houses the world's largest population of blind people. Of the 37 million blind people across the globe, over 15 million are from India," said Suman, a software engineer and one of the visually-challenged presenters at the function.The event was organised by Antardrishti, an initiative for reformation and rehabilitation of visually and physically challenged people."Despite all the literary progress, visually impaired people are treated as dependent and in certain cases even as beggars. On the one hand their family disowns them or treats them as a liability and on the other various mafias use them for beggary. This section still craves for acceptance by the society," says Pratichhaya, a visually-impaired student of the Lady Shri Ram College who participated in the event.She also said that ensuring employment is an important tool of empowerment for the visually-challenged."We have set up factories exclusively for the people from the visually and physically challenged population, where they are employed on wages to produce candles and herbal soaps.They are also engaged in terracotta (diya) painting and garment stitching. The products, hence made, are put on sale at shoppers' hub like Gandhi Mela and Delhi Haat. The earnings go to their welfare fund," points out Deepa Kaushik, Co-ordinator Antardrishti Project.Apart from this, the employees are also entitled to the Provident Fund and ESI facilities, like any other central or state government employee, she adds A band of visually-impaired artistes performed popular numbers like "Allah ke Bande," "Maula Mere" as well as self-composed songs during the event to mark the World Sight Day.Pop singer Jasbir Jassi who was present on the occasion said, "India is a land of invincible talent. All they need is recognition. It feels proud to see visually impaired people perform with such zeal that I could hardly make out that these people cannot really see their instruments.

PLEASE CLICK ON THE LINK BELOW TO VIEW THE EVENT ON YOU TUBE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYsQ7_vByAU
Reported by Sarojini ( A member of SAM) Student of St Mark’s Sr Secondary Public School Meera Bagh New Delhi, India

HELPING FOCUS SMSMB

2010-11-24T12:45:00.006-05:00

REPORT ON PRERNA NIKETAN

Prerna Niketan is a voluntary organization working for the society especially the physically challenged children. Ms Mrinal Kanta Saxena
(Ms Meenu Saxena) is the founder and the president of this organization. Prerna
Niketan was established on 23rd November 1998 with only 5 children. At present, there are 51 children (only boys) from 8 yrs to 19 yrs of age. Due to shortage of space girls are not included.

AIM OF THIS ORGANIZATION

Actually, Ms Meenu wanted to do something for the society as she thinks God has given us this human body to do constructive things. So she came up with the idea of establishing such an organization. Prerna Niketan helps the youngsters get over their insecurities and imparts in them the life skills needed to contribute to society on equal
terms and also encourages parents to provide their children suffering from some diseases like polio, with medical treatment. Children here are also given vocational training like candle making, diya making, flower pots, craft items, etc

CONTRIBUTION OF OUR SCHOOL

Our school organizes the Diwali Mela every year where organizations like Prerna Niketan and many more come and display their products. School teachers and students buy these products and provide a helping hand to such children and organizations.

Reported by Danish Girdhar Sarojini Mahajan

HELPING FOCUS SMSMB

2010-11-24T10:43:00.004-05:00

MUSKAAN – A CREATIVE SMILE

Muskaan is a vocational training centre where intellectually
challenged and differently abled children are trained. The children are split in various units which are under rotation. Some units are bakery unit, candles and diya unit, gifts and stationary unit, etc. Here children are taught how to make these beautiful things. The items and products produced by MUSKAAN are put for sale in different schools. The money earned is utilized for the children’s education, betterment and their upbringing. They become independ

MUSKAAN AND ST. MARK’S

The students of our school, ST. MARK’S SR. SEC. PUBLIC SCHOOL, eagerly wait for the MUSKAAN CAMP, which is just put before the auspicious festival, DEEPAWALI. Our school and MUSKAAN promote an eco-friendly and green DEEPAWALI. Diyas, candles and paper hand bags of many varieties are sold. Students and teachers enthusiastically participate in this camp. This thereby promotesa pollution free DEEPAWALI. Teachers have also come forward with full zeal and zest. They are actively participating with MUSKAAN and teach our students how to save our environment by promoting a pollution free DEEPAWALI and hence working for a social cause. We salute the spirit of MUSKAAN.

Reported By Ravit, Malik Class10G
St Mark's Senior Secondary Public School
Meera Bagh, New Delhi, India

Hair for Cancer

2010-11-01T11:17:00.003-04:00

During the 2009/2010 GVC contest, Erin was Skyping students in Croatia. One of the students commented, "your hair is really long." It was then that I first found out about Erin's hair donations! She told the students in Croatia how she has been growing her hair to donate for wigs for children with cancer. Not only that, but this would be her 4th such donation. I'd asked Erin at the time to do a before/after picture for this blog. She agreed, but said it would be awhile since her hair was not yet long enough. (Now you may not know, but the cut hair piece needs to be 8 to 12 inches in length. Hair only grows about 1/2 inch per month, so that's a good two year commitment!)

In Erin's own words, "This past summer was really hard. It was so hot, but the hair still needed to grow a bit more."

And here it is; the before and after. Erin is now in month 1 of growing her next donation.

Kids CAN make a difference!

San Diego

2010-10-03T13:40:00.014-04:00

Students from Muir School worked at the California Coastal Cleanup on September 25th joining thousands of volunteers on California beaches.With 70% of the cleanup sites reporting,the statewide count stands at 73,377 volunteers. Those volunteers picked up 692,203 pounds of trash and an additional 59,228 pounds of recyclable materials, for a total of 751,431 pounds.

All students at Muir joined the United Nations International Day of Peace on September 21st. They made banners, doves, and pinswheels, walked a lap around the school, and submitted their photos to the Jane Goodall Roots and Shoots book.

Muir's kinder classes wrote letters to soldiers in the field and also sending them care packages with socks and food and others items. This is their positive response to the death of their teacher's brother, an Army staff sergeant in Afghanistan, on August 30th.

2009/2010 Summary of Helping Focus Examples

2010-05-13T11:18:00.004-04:00

The helping focus category of the Global Virtual Classroom Contest is to encourage students to focus on demonstrating ways of giving back to an area of need in either their local community or internationally.

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.

--
Charles Elsey
Program Manager
Global Virtual Classroom

It's Peanut Butter Jelly Time

2009-07-29T15:40:00.007-04:00

Like most communities, Warsaw, IN. has a local food bank to assist people and families in need. Students in the Glass Class at Harrison Elementary School wanted to do something special for their food bank, Combined Community Services. As members of Team GVC08-01, they were committed to focusing on kindness and helping others.

The students brainstormed some ideas and decided that donations of peanut butter and jelly would provide nutritious snacks for practically all CCS clients, especially the children. They started their collection. As the jars came in, the students shared their project with their GVC partners at Lincoln Elementary in Oak Park, Illinois and Petach Tikva, Israel. The Israeli students sent words of encouragement and support. Since Oak Park and Warsaw are only about two hours apart, the Lincoln kids decided to collect PB and J as well.

Mr. Glass seized the opportunity to visit Lincoln Elementary, collect their PB and J donations, and meet his GVC partner, Matt Kuntz, in person. Between the two schools, the students collected more than 200 jars of peanut butter and jelly. They made slide shows of the pictures they shared and Warsaw Times Union newspaper featured the kids in a front page article. Events like this helped Team GVC 08-01 be recognized for their Helping Focus but the real beneficiaries were the needy people of the Warsaw community.

See: Sharing with Others - form the School of Kindness GVC-0801 Website [news article is quoted on the bottom]

Stand By Me

2009-07-28T22:43:00.002-04:00

This is a great YouTube Music Video that demonstrates the power of global collaboration and cross-cultural understanding and giving back to others.

SEE VIDEO HERE

I hope you enjoy!! Andrew Ezzell - GSBI Foundation

GVC 2009-2010 School Year

2009-07-28T22:40:00.002-04:00

Projects exemplifying a helping focus and giving back to others is one of the judging criteria for the Global Virtual Classroom Contest. We thought it would be good to have a blog dedicated to what GVC students and teachers are doing to give back to or help others and to identify projects that other students and teachers can learn from and get involved with.