In April, Harker’s Global Empowerment and Outreach (GEO) club was visited by Lauren Roach, a representative from the Toronto-based nonprofit Free the Children. Roach updated the students on how the money they raised was being used to improve conditions in rural China. In December 2008, GEO had organized a fundraising effort that generated more than $14,000 for Free the Children.
In the village of Quanyuan, a school has been built that is attended by about 300 children, Roach said. A pig was also given to every family that had a child in the school. Roach’s presentation included a quote from Zhou Xialong, 11, who said, “My happiest memory is the first day I went to the new school.”
Elsewhere, in the village of Gufubao, money was used to purchase goats, which can be used for milk and fur, as well as trade.
The response to the devastating earthquake in Haiti tops the list of Harker’s recent outreach efforts. Students, teachers and parents joined forces at all three campuses to fund ongoing efforts to provide food, medical supplies and shelter to the victims of the January temblor in Port au Prince, the tiny country’s densely populated capitol.
The Bucknall Student Council and the Gr. 4-5 Spirit and Service Club helped organize a hot chocolate and donuthole drive in January, earning over $3,000. Several lower school teachers and staff donated funds to offset the costs of food and drink to further enhance profit margin.
“Our student body truly outdid itself with its generosity and concern displayed throughout our fundraising effort,” said Kristin Giammona, elementary division head Gr. 4-5. “It is heartwarming to witness and be a part of such an outpouring of care and monetary support.”
Similarly, middle school students participated in Coin Wars, a friendly grade-level competition to make a difference. The organizers asked students to donate pennies and nickels for Haitian relief. The class with the largest number of one- and five-cent coins in their collection earned the most points. The effort, won by the class of 2015, raised a total of $3,100 in ten days.
Although they planned their fundraising and blood drive months in advance, members of the upper school Red Cross Club adapted their efforts to benefit Haitian relief. The annual blood drive collected over 80 donations from eligible students, faculty, staff and parents. While donations will likely be used locally, the collection helps offset blood donations elsewhere that will be sent to Port au Prince.
In another Red Cross effort, students emptied their pockets of change in a competition to slime the class dean and class presidents at the weekly school meeting, prompting generous contributions. The mounting piles of coin attracted daily attention in Manzanita Hall, and playful challenges by the deans and presidents to stuff the jars of their competitors added spice to the contest.
In the end, the sophomores were victorious, resulting in class dean Matt Harley and class president Revanth Kosaraju suffering a sliming worth $1,137. In total, the slime contest earned $1,983, an amount complemented by bake sales and pretzel-grams which earned $274 for a total of $2,267.
“We thought that it would be great to offer the Harker community an opportunity to assist Red Cross Haiti relief efforts during our week,” said Red Cross Club president Alex Han, Gr. 12. “We put our best efforts into raising awareness for the cause and making our fundraisers original and exciting, whether through selling handmade pretzel-grams or having a dean and class president get slimed.”
In late February 18 upper school students spent half a day removing non-native plants from the Arastradero Preserve as part of a project by Acterra, an environmental nonprofit in Palo Alto. “The weather held and everyone enjoyed working together; we got a lot done,” said Kerry Enzensperger, director of upper school community service. Harker students were involved in a variety of other activates geared toward helping the community as well.
Gr. 3 students collected new pajamas and books for needy children in the U.S. and elsewhere. Over 330 pairs of pajamas and 677 books were collected. “All of the third graders were encouraged to participate by bringing in books or pajamas,” said Joe Connolly, dean of students K-Gr. 5. “We had two third graders present the donations to Pallie Zambrano, co-president of the Northern California Chapter of The Pajama Program.”
On Martin Luther King Day, an official Congressional Day of Service, Colin Goodwin, Gr. 4 English teacher, organized a group of about 30 Gr. 4-5 students and parents to work with Save the Bay, planting native trees and grasses at the Eden Landing Ecological Preserve in Hayward. “On our day of service we planted something like 300 plants,” said Goodwin. “This was my first year organizing this project, and I hope to do the project again next year .”
Upper school Key Club members organized a drive for denim in January, collecting lightly-used jeans for homeless teenagers worldwide.
The class of 2011 held its annual toiletries drive, collecting hundreds of personal hygiene items for distribution at local homeless shelters. Similar efforts are mounted by lower school English teacher Pat Walsh and middle school librarian Bernie Morrissey on their campuses.
Lower school students authored and sent valentines to U.S. marines serving in Afghanistan.
Members of the middle school Peace2Peace Club will transform donations of lightly used toys, electronics and games into funds for daycare in India via a garage sale over spring break. The program allows older siblings who would otherwise be forced to stay home, to attend school regularly.
Upper school girls and boys soccer teams raised over $3,000 through T-shirt sales and donations for cancer research at their January doubleheader.
The middle school Service Club gathered new and gently used winter coats to benefit the local organization InnVision (www.innvision.org), which helps Bay Area families and individuals who are homeless or struggling financially.
Math instructor Peggy Crisler challenged middle school advisories to provide Christmas gifts for families through Kidango, a Bay Area nonprofit child development agency.
Kristin Giammona, elementary division head, recently volunteered at the Children’s Discovery Museum as a guest activity leader at Family Science Night in the Museum. Giammona was recommended to the event by a Harker parent who felt she would do an excellent job.
Family Science Night provides an opportunity for students to experience science in a fun and hands-on way. The theme of the night was “Toy Box Physics,” one of the museum’s more popular themes. It included an examination of simple machines and how they are present in the toys kids use everyday.
The Nichols Hall auditorium was abuzz Fri., May 7, during the visit of the latest guest of the Harker Speaker Series, Matt Flannery, CEO of Kiva. A ground-breaking organization in the fight against international poverty, Kiva utilizes transactions known as micro-loans (loans of small amounts, typically $25 or more) to enable people in remote, impoverished areas to start their own businesses and have a chance at success.
A graduate of Stanford University and a former computer programmer for TiVo, Flannery shared the story of how he went from “helping people pause live TV” to helping poor people in far-flung countries become entrepreneurs and start new chapters in their lives. To date, the total value of all loans made via Kiva has surpassed $136 million, with a repayment rate of 98.57 percent.
When it comes to small loans, Flannery said, “people are better than banks. People are able to take on more risk than banks, so if you are able to aggregate thousands of people who lend 25 dollars each, they can diversify their funding across many different businesses and many different places.”
Those thousands of people are also more able than banks to absorb risk, which has the added benefit of lowering interest rates.
Flannery’s interest in micro-finance began while he was still working at TiVo in the early 2000s, when his then-fiancée, Jessica, took him to a talk by micro-finance guru Dr. Muhammad Yunus, who lent small amounts of money to the working poor in Bangladesh. The loans were paid back, defying the many predictions to the contrary.
Inspired, Matt and Jessica traveled to Africa, which he described as “a place full of entrepreneurs.” There, they encountered many people with great ideas who lacked the capital to realize their dreams. Upon returning to the United States, the two decided to try to generate a stock market in the remote area they had visited.
After generating a business plan, they took the idea to venture capitalists. When the couple were unable to explain how they could make the idea profitable, they were advised to try talking to charity organizations. But when they presented their concept to those groups, they were told, ironically enough, that it more closely resembled a business.
Moreover, due to security concerns and legal restrictions, the plan to send large amounts of money to remote areas was deemed too risky.
With no funding and the possibility of their new venture being illegal, Matt and Jessica decided to pursue the idea on their own as a hobby. “Instead of starting a company, we just did it through our own personal checking account,” Flannery said. After making contact with a pastor in Uganda named Moses, they decided to have him take pictures of the people receiving their loans and post updates on their progress at an Internet café.
The loans went to such people as a goat herder, a restaurateur and a fruit stand owner. Flannery built a software system to invest in the businesses they helped start, and encouraged his friends and family to buy shares.
“It’s probably the best donation you’ll ever make, because maybe you’ll get it back,” Flannery told them. “But it’s probably the worst investment you’ll ever make because there’s no chance of making money here, and you’ll probably lose some of it.”
The investments worked, however, and the loans were eventually paid back. Flannery recalled having conversations with his friends about reading the online updates on the businesses they funded. “We’re really on to something,” he remembered telling himself, “because I’ve turned my group of lazy friends into people that really care about something.”
In October 2005, Flannery left his job with TiVo to devote all of his time to the newly founded non-profit Kiva.
“The idea of person-to-person lending on the Internet was a new concept and we were at the very beginning of that,” he said.
When Dr. Yunus won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006, interest in micro-finance reached new heights. Kiva was soon being covered by CNN, CNBC, the New York Times and the Oprah Winfrey Show. By 2007, funded primarily by donations, Kiva had lent more than $10 million.
Recently, the micro-finance world has been experimenting with sending loans via cellular phones, which helps alleviate labor costs. Currently, the process is much more manual, with loan officers going out into the field and setting up loans in person, resulting in more overhead. Kiva itself has begun lending more to students, a type of fund the group can take on because its capital is more flexible. That is necessary since student loans can take an especially long time to pay back. The organization has also recently funded more green ventures, such as loans for solar panels instead of kerosene lamps or charcoal stoves.
Before closing his talk and opening the floor for questions, Flannery explained that Kiva was able to grow in part because its founders pursued the idea not as a business but as something they loved to do.
“We kind of gave up on Kiva as a business idea, and started thinking about it as just something we love to do,” he said. “And because of that, I think we really enabled it to succeed and to grow, because we didn’t put pressure on it to be a career, or put pressure on it to be really successful.”
An article at Examiner.com reports that Shreya Indukuri, Gr. 10, gave a presentation at the Tech Titans of Tomorrow: Teens Plugged In 2010 conference, hosted by SDForum in Mountain View. The conference drew students who helped improve the environmental standards of their schools through forward-thinking initiatives.
In her presentation, Indukuri discussed how more efficient energy usage could be leveraged by schools to reduce costs, which could prove quite valuable in a time of budgetary crisis. She used Harker as an example, showing that the school was able to save money by monitoring and controlling energy consumption at the lower school campus.
Indukuri and classmate Daniela Lapidous, Gr. 10, were to present at the Bay Area Schools Environmental Conference on May 1 at the Hayes Mansion in San Jose. Indukuri will also speak on a youth panel for the San Francisco Commonwealth Club on May 4, at the club’s office at 595 Market St. in San Francisco.
Students, faculty and Harker family members arrived en masse at the Blackford campus on April 26 for the fourth annual Harker Cancer Walk. This year’s event was another success, bringing in $5,500 in one day alone, with donations still being received at Harker News Online press time. The well-attended outing once again raised funds for Camp Okizu, a program that provides fun activities and quality care for young cancer patients. Children at Camp Okizu enjoy outdoor pastimes such as swimming, boating, archery and a ropes course, in addition to social events such as a dance and a barbecue dinner. The money raised at the Cancer Walk will be used to purchase equipment to allow Camp Okizu to provide these services to the children.
Tables sold bracelets, water bottles and baked goods to the attendees, who enjoyed walking, talking, meeting and greeting in the refreshing spring weather.
In the week leading up to the Cancer Walk, special posters were made to be displayed during the event, and people also made flags containing slogans honoring cancer survivors and those who passed away from the illness. These flags were then placed along the walk as the event took place.
“The weather was perfect. The baked goods, divine! T-shirts, bracelets and water bottles made everyone true fashion icons!” said Cindy Ellis, middle school division head, who organized the event with middle school computer science teacher Michael Schmidt. Schmidt began organizing the Cancer Walk in 2007 following the passing of his mother due to cancer in 2006.
Donations are still being accepted at this time. Checks or cash can be brought to the Blackford campus front office. Checks can be made out to either Camp Okizu or Harker.
Reprinted from the Harker Quarterly March 2010 issue
The response to the devastating earthquake in Haiti tops the list of Harker’s recent outreach efforts. Students, teachers and parents joined forces at all three campuses to fund ongoing efforts to provide food, medical supplies and shelter to the victims of the January temblor in Port au Prince, the tiny country’s densely populated capitol.
The Bucknall Student Council and the Gr. 4-5 Spirit and Service Club helped organize a hot chocolate and donuthole drive in January, earning over $3,000. Several lower school teachers and staff donated funds to offset the costs of food and drink to further enhance profit margin. “Our student body truly outdid itself with its generosity and concern displayed throughout our fundraising effort,” said Kristin Giammona, elementary division head Gr. 4-5. “It is heartwarming to witness and be a part of such an outpouring of care and monetary support.”
Similarly, middle school students participated in Coin Wars, a friendly grade-level competition to make a difference. The organizers asked students to donate pennies and nickels for Haitian relief. The class with the largest number of one- and five-cent coins in their collection earned the most points. The effort, won by the class of 2015, raised a total of $3,100 in ten days.
Blood Drive Although they planned their fundraising and blood drive months in advance, members of the upper school Red Cross Club adapted their efforts to benefit Haitian relief. The annual blood drive collected over 80 donations from eligible students, faculty, staff and parents. While donations will likely be used locally, the collection helps offset blood donations elsewhere that will be sent to Port au Prince.
In another Red Cross effort, students emptied their pockets of change in a competition to slime the class dean and class presidents at the weekly school meeting, prompting generous contributions. The mounting piles of coin attracted daily attention in Manzanita Hall, and playful challenges by the deans and presidents to stuff the jars of their competitors added spice to the contest.
In the end, the sophomores were victorious, resulting in class dean Matt Harley and class president Revanth Kosaraju suffering a sliming worth $1,137. In total, the slime contest earned $1,983, an amount complemented by bake sales and pretzel-grams which earned $274 for a total of $2,267.
“We thought that it would be great to offer the Harker community an opportunity to assist Red Cross Haiti relief efforts during our week,” said Red Cross Club president Alex Han, Gr. 12. “We put our best efforts into raising awareness for the cause and making our fundraisers original and exciting, whether through selling handmade pretzel-grams or having a dean and class president get slimed.”
Harker parents joined in Haiti relief efforts as well. Siobhan Due, mother of Kai Due, K, and a stylist at Faux Hair Salon, donated several haircuts to earn funds on behalf of earthquake victims. Due and her colleagues raised $305 for the effort.
Other Harker outreach efforts included:
Acterra In late February 18 upper school students spent half a day removing non-native plants from the Arastradero Preserve as part of a project by Acterra, an environmental nonprofit in Palo Alto. “The weather held and everyone enjoyed working together; we got a lot done,” said Kerry Enzensperger, director of upper school community service.
Pajama Program Gr. 3 students collected new pajamas and books for needy children in the U.S. and elsewhere. Over 330 pairs of pajamas and 677 books were collected. “All of the third graders were encouraged to participate by bringing in books or pajamas,” said Joe Connolly, dean of students K-Gr. 5. “We had two third graders present the donations to Pallie Zambrano, co-president of the Northern California Chapter of The Pajama Program.”
Save the Bay On Martin Luther King Day, an official Congressional Day of Service, Colin Goodwin, Gr. 4 English teacher, organized a group of about 30 Gr. 4-5 students and parents to work with Save the Bay, planting native trees and grasses at the Eden Landing Ecological Preserve in Hayward. “On our day of we planted something like 300 plants,” said Goodwin. “This was my first year organizing this project, and I hope to do the project again next year.”
Jeans for Teens Upper school Key Club members organized a drive for denim in January, collecting lightly-used jeans for homeless teenagers worldwide.
Toiletries Drives The class of 2011 held its annual toiletries drive, collecting hundreds of personal hygiene items for distribution at local homeless shelters. Similar efforts are mounted by the middle school advisories of history teacher Pat White, librarian Bernie Morrissey and math teacher Leah Moll on their campuses.
Afghanistan Valentines Lower school students authored and sent valentines to U.S. marines serving in Afghanistan.
Peace2Peace Members of the middle school Peace2Peace Club will transform donations of lightly used toys, electronics and games into funds for daycare in India via a garage sale over spring break. The program allows older siblings who would otherwise be forced to stay home, to attend school regularly.
Kicks for Cancer Upper school girls and boys soccer teams raised over $3,000 through T-shirt sales and donations for cancer research at their January doubleheader.
Warm Coat Drive The middle school Service Club gathered new and gently used winter coats to benefit the local organization InnVision (www.innvision.org), which helps Bay Area families and individuals who are homeless or struggling financially.
Kidango Christmas Math instructor Peggy Crisler challenged middle school advisories to provide Christmas gifts for families through Kidango, a Bay Area nonprofit child development agency.
In early April, two score members of the Harker community ran up the hills of San Francisco and along the lush Pacific shoreline in honor of beloved history teacher and basketball coach John Near, who died last September after a four-year battle against cancer.
The group ran in the Golden Gate Headlands Marathon, Half Marathon & Seven-MileRace. Inspired by Near’s emphasis on hard work and passion, seniors Aadithya Prakash and Arthi Padmanabhan and Padmanabhan’s mother, Radhika Padmanabhan, dedicated hours to organizing the event and rallying seniors, faculty and parents to join in the race. Even members of the community who could not run showed up for support and helped pledge and spread the word.
Even though it was Prakash’s first marathon, he ran through San Francisco in under four hours, placing seventh. For some – seniors Stefan Eckhardt, Arjun Mody, Sarah Teplitsky and Padmanabhan – it was their first half marathon, and Eckhardt finished fourth.
Prakash estimated about $7,000 in pledges; cash is still coming in. All the money will go to the John Near Excellence in History Education Endowment Fund established last October by his family.
Near’s wife, Pam Dickinson, director of Harker’s Office of Communication, and daughter Casey Near ’06 supported the team every step of the way, adding their pledge to the endowment fund. “You all represented the heart and soul of what Harker is with this event,” Dickinson said, “and John would be so proud.”
Students’ storefront dioramas and ikebana flower arrangements are slated to replace other Harker pieces currently on display at Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital (LPCH) at Stanford University.
The change will take place in April, said Eric Hoffman, lower school art department chair K-Gr. 5. Two years ago, Hoffman decided students’ work deserved a public showing. He proposed the idea to his students, asking for suggestions on where they could exhibit.
One student suggested a hospital. Hoffman hopped on the idea and contacted LPCH. After months of planning with Susan Gray, administrative project manager at the hospital, and display specialist Ted Cohen, student works premiered in spring 2009. Sculptural pieces were placed in the hospital lobby on the second floor while paintings, drawings and prints were shown in the outpatient clinic and waiting rooms across the street.
The exhibits change at least once a year, so Gray and Cohen recently visited the Bucknall campus to select the dioramas and ikebana flower arrangements to be displayed at the main children’s hospital. They will be on the second floor. The replacement pieces, made by fourth and fifth graders, are currently on display at the Bucknall campus.
“For our students, this validates their art skills and efforts and gives them a sense of purpose knowing that their artwork made somebody else’s life a little brighter,” Hoffman said.
Lower school students were greeted with another afternoon of great weather for this year’s Jump Rope for Heart event. Students in K-Gr. 5, as well as their teachers, could be seen having great fun jumping rope, high jumping onto soft mats, limboing, leaping over makeshift hurdles, crawling through obstacle courses, shooting basketball and other activities to “Celebrate Healthy Living,” the theme for this year’s event. Each grade level rotated to a different station for each activity to keep things running smoothly. Those who participated also had the option of writing a person’s name with chalk on the school blacktop and dedicating their activities to that person.
As always, donations proved to be an important part of Jump Rope for Heart, and nearly $2,400 has been raised for the American Heart Association.