Last month’s Kicks Against Cancer soccer game raised $2,756 for Camp Okizu, a nonprofit organization that offers outdoor activities for children with cancer and their families. Harker’s annual soccer game, started in 2010 by members of the upper school girls varsity soccer team, raises funds by selling tickets, T-shirts, bracelets, baked goods and the chance to kick soccer balls at faculty members in the popular halftime game called “Butts Up.”
“I have been watching the upperclassmen run Kicks Against Cancer since I was a freshman,” said Krishna Bheda, grade 12, who led the effort this year. “I have appreciated how raising this money for Camp Okizu can really make a difference.”
Each year, the fundraiser is held around the start of the spring semester, and culminates with an evening series of games featuring Harker soccer teams. This year, the upper school girls faced off with Castilleja, and the varsity and junior varsity boys teams played against Menlo.
In the process of planning the event over the years, team members have met with families helped by Camp Okizu and representatives from the organization. “Because of this, it has become really near and dear to my heart,” Bheda said.
Planning for this year’s event started at the beginning of the soccer season. Bheda said her team of organizers – made up of seniors Adyant Kanakamedala, Meena Gudapati and Stephanie Scaglia and junior Julia Amick – helped make sure that the planning process went smoothly.
Several other student groups on campus also contributed to the fundraising mission. The Student Council set up a tailgate to sell food during the games, and the Spirit Club promoted the event on social media and during lunchtime on campus. Students also prepared baked goods to sell, and members of other soccer teams created posters and videos to raise further awareness. “It was a great bonding experience,” Bheda said.
Organizers for this year’s Kicks Against Cancer raised funds during lunch on Wednesday by selling T-shirts that will be worn at the Friday soccer event. Every year, Kicks Against Cancer donates the proceeds from the sales to Camp Okizu, an organization that offers camp programs to families with children diagnosed with cancer.
Students also promoted the event by setting up a special “soccer bowling” game, in which participants kicked a ball at a set of pins for a chance to win a pass that would allow them to bypass the lunch line.
A total of three games will be played at Davis Field on Friday as part of the fundraiser. Boys junior varsity will play Menlo at 3 p.m., girls varsity will face off against Castilleja at 4:30 p.m. and the final game will feature boys varsity against Menlo at 6:15 p.m.
Today, upper school students attended an assembly that featured an appearance by Tom Nazario, an assistant law professor at the University of San Francisco and founder of The Forgotten International, a nonprofit organization dedicated to alleviating poverty around the world. Nazario partnered with photojournalist Renee C. Byer to publish the 2014 book “Living on a Dollar a Day: The Lives and Faces of the World’s Poor.” The book chronicled the lives of extremely impoverished women and children in various parts of the world, including northern Ghana, Peru, India and Romania.
The publishing of the book led to the creation of a documentary of the same name, which students and faculty viewed at the assembly. Similar to the book, the film traveled to Ghana, Peru and India to examine the lives of people living in extreme poverty, with commentary provided by people the filmmakers encountered during their travels.
Following the viewing, Nazario answered questions from students. Nazario explained how interpreters were instrumental in overcoming language barriers and approaching people for interviews. Many of the people in the communities he visited, he added, were very close-knit and dependent on one another, a quality he noted is largely lacking in wealthier countries.
Today, the grade 4 holiday toy drive came to a successful end as students delivered 435 toys to St. Justin’s Community Ministry in Santa Clara. All Bucknall families were invited to join the 10-day effort by bringing unwrapped toys to the lower school gymnasium lobby. Each year, St. Justin’s serves thousands of people by providing necessities, such as food and clothing. The annual holiday toy drive gives underprivileged families the opportunity to “shop” for the ideal toys for their children. Elementary division head Kristin Giammona and lower school dean of students Mary Holaday accompanied the students during the drop-off at St. Justin’s, which was no doubt glad to receive the massive contribution!
Middle schoolers worked hard to fulfill holiday wishes for families in need during the campus’ Family Giving Tree drive, which ended on Monday. In late November, students were given wishes to fulfill and in the subsequent weeks set out to acquire the gifts described in the wishes. In all, more than 400 gifts were donated to help local families have a happy holiday season!
Upper school students have been busy with service projects this holiday season! On Monday, students loaded up vehicles with 170 gifts to be donated to Family Giving Tree, which each year delivers goods to thousands of impoverished Bay Area families. Additionally, Harker sponsored 10 families through Family Supportive Housing’s Adopt-A-Family program, sending provisions to families in crisis during the holiday season, and students helped carry out a drive that provided two carloads of basic necessities to local charity Sunday Friends.
Last week, the yearly grade 5 food drive culminated in a donation of 1,900 food items (worth more than $700) to St. Justin’s Community Ministry Pantry. Students collected items over a period of two weeks, requesting canned vegetables, pasta, rice, beans and other goods. The drop-off was a special occasion for the students and parents, who were joined by former lower school teacher Pat Walsh, who started the food drive more than 20 years ago. Walsh retired at the end of the 2016-17 school year after an incredible 41 years at Harker, and his appearance to help with the drop-off was a fitting way to end a successful effort!
The Harker community pulled together last week to help those affected by the fires in the North Bay, and had the surprise help of an alumna working in disaster relief.
Following the cancellation of the Harker Family & Alumni Picnic in mid-October, the school decided to donate picnic ticket sales receipts to relief efforts in Sonoma County. It was a welcome surprise to find that one of the organizers helping direct donations, Carol Beattie ’65, is a Harker Day School alumna.
Beattie is board vice chair at HealdsburgForever.org, a 14-year-old organization that helps fund various nonprofits in the Healdsburg area, which is assisting the Sonoma County Resilience Fund.
Once the decision was made to donate picnic receipts, the community stepped up the program and mounted a full-on effort to collect needed supplies for the stricken area. Along with $8,500 in picnic receipts, community members chipped in another $1,500 in cash to total about $10,000 in donations that went to the Sonoma County Resilience Fund. The Salvation Army received $2,800 in gift cards and the Redwood Empire Food Bank was the glad recipient of 150 bags and boxes of non-perishable food and pet food.
The donations are all thanks to a concerted effort by a variety of community members including members of Harker’s advancement department who coordinated the efforts.
Students and parents from the lower, middle and upper schools all contributed labor to the effort, with volunteers accepting donations to “stuff the bus” at a drop-off station at the upper school during Friday night’s football game, as well as at the middle and lower schools. In addition, lower school students wrote letters of encouragement to go with the more material contributions.
“I just want to thank everyone at Harker for the amazing job you did,” said Capt. Rio Ray, corps commanding officer, Salvation Army. “You are impacting lives. There are people that have lost everything and now have something because of you. So, thank you, continue to strive to serve others, you are making a difference and making the world a better place. Thank you.”
Redwood Empire Food Bank has served about 85 families a day over the last 12 days and was grateful for the Harker delivery. “Everybody has disasters; sometimes its medical, sometimes is the loss of a job, sometimes it’s just a disruption in your family,” said David Goodman, chief executive officer, Redwood Empire Food Bank. “In this particular case, the Sonoma complex fire has impacted thousands of people who never expected to need food assistance and here they are today. The food that you have given, your generosity, will improve lives and change lives and help people get back on their feet,” he said.
Upper school students packed Nichols Hall on Friday morning to seek out volunteer opportunities at this year’s Service Fair. Student-run organizations, as well as local organizations including the Monterey Bay Aquarium and Outdoor Science School, had tables set up where representatives offered information to passersby.
The Tutoring Club, one of the many student organizations accepting volunteers, offers tutoring services to students at the lower, middle and upper school levels. Students are often referred to the club by counselors. “We ask qualified upperclassmen to tutor these students,” said senior Richa Bhattacharya, co-organizer of the club with classmate Morgan Douglas. “So they’ll meet maybe once a week after school and give additional guidance.” Signing up as a tutor is as easy as being added to a mailing list. “Whenever there’s a tutoring request, we send it out to the entire club and it’s basically on a first-come, first-serve basis,” Bhattacharya said.
Shafieen Ibrahim, grade 11, was at the event to recruit volunteers for his organization, Shafieen Helping a Friend (SHAF). Ibrahim, whose parents are from Bangladesh, hopes to help children in rural Bangladesh, specifically to “get them new equipment, get them more advanced technology so that the kids there have a better education,” he said. Money he has raised by competing in Bay Area chess tournaments has been used to provide a girls school in the city of Comilla with new computers and other equipment. Ibrahim was searching for volunteers to assist in creating teaching materials that will help the students in Comilla learn how to use software such as Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator to create a “visual product” that can be sold in the United States to generate more funds for the school.
Prameela Kottapalli, grade 11, was at the Service Fair to promote Power of Words (POW), a student organization that introduces local elementary and middle school students “to the power of creativity and creative thought,” she said. POW has allied with the Boys & Girls Club of Silicon Valley to hold an upcoming eight-week writing workshop, and was at the fair seeking volunteers to help develop the curriculum and lesson plans. “We’d be helping kids with their writing skills as well as evoking a sense of creative thought and imagination,” said Kottapalli. The organization also plans to hold workshops to help the young writers develop essays they plan to submit to contests.
San Jose city councilman Chappie Jones was on hand yesterday morning to thank Harker’s freshman class effort of trail preservation at the Coyote Open Space Preserve. Jones reminded the team of 200 students and their advisors of the recent natural disasters, referencing the North Bay fires as well as the hurricanes that ravaged the Caribbean, Texas and Florida last month. “We see how important our environment is. We have to protect it,” urged the councilman. “You are part of that protecting our environment.”
Also on hand was Marc Landgraf, external affairs manager of the Open Space Authority of Santa Clara Valley. “You guys are contributing to 50,000 people a year enjoying this preserve and that’s a big deal to us,” he said. “We really appreciate your being here.”
Soon after hearing Jones’ words of encouragement, Harker freshman broke into three teams led by park employees to widen and clear the four-mile Arrowhead Loop Trail and remove invasive, non-native plants from an adjacent meadow. The work was overseen by Dana Litwin, volunteer programs administrator of the Open Space Authority. Litwin garnered the help of a dozen employees and volunteers to train and shepherd the students’ labor. Litwin pointed out that “in one day, the students did what would take our staff hundreds of hours!”
The annual freshman service trip was coordinated by Harker’s upper school Green Committee, led by Spanish teacher Diana Moss. One of the primary goals of the committee, according to Moss, is “to see our students develop a greater appreciation for and deeper connection with the natural habitats that surround us here in the Bay Area. Our hope is that many of them choose to become stewards for the environment who can make a positive difference on the planet at a time when climate change threatens our future.”
The freshman service trip happens annually on PSAT Wednesday, when sophomores and juniors are taking the exam and seniors use the day to work on college applications. Traditionally, freshman advisors join their students in a daylong effort to help the newest members of the upper school enjoy the fulfillment of volunteer work and jumpstart their community service requirement. Students who participated will receive credit for five of the annual required 10 hours of community service.
Seeing an opportunity to mix environmental protection with volunteer work, the Green Committee took on the coordination of this year’s event. Both the Green Committee and the Open Space Authority planned this event to become an annual pilgrimage by Harker freshman.
Freshman Sarah Raymond embraced that mission. “I think that’s really cool for our school to make an impact, to be known as the ones to clean the trail here,” she said.
Classmate Aniket Kriplani agreed, noting that being part of a large team lessens the load. “It makes you feel like you are getting a lot more done. When you look around and you see a lot of people. Work gets done fast,” he said. “If you’re doing this alone, it wouldn’t be as fun.”
The Green Committee also worked with Harker kitchen staff to plan a reduced waste lunch. Trays of lunchmeat and veggies displaced individually wrapped sandwiches to minimize the need for plastic wrap. Students and advisors brought reusable water bottles from home thereby eliminating the consumption of single-use plastic bottles. Even the location, about 20 minutes from Harker’s upper school campus, reduced the emissions of a longer bus trip and kept students efforts close to home where they might return to appreciate their work in the future.
Jones echoed this sentiment. “Nature is part of our DNA as human beings,” said Jones. “Nature is that outlet where you can go and just breathe, relax and just enjoy the outdoors.”