In mid-December, the Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital (LPCH) at Stanford University sent over an art curation and interior design team to select art to display in different parts of the hospital.
The Harker School’s lower school art department has had students involved in displaying art at the hospital for several years, ever since Eric Hoffman, lower school art department chair K-5, asked his students for suggestions on where their art could be displayed back in 2008. Hoffman contacted LPCH on a student’s suggestion, and after months of planning with Susan Gray, administrative project manager at the hospital, and display specialist Ted Cohen, student works premiered in spring 2009.
The art is switched out occasionally, and the team from LPCH came to Harker to select the newest pieces. “We had displayed everything in the conference room at the lower school campus, and when they came in, they were truly surprised, and very, very happy,” said Hoffman of the team’s visit. “This particular ceramics project is one we’ve been developing for about a year.”
The grade 4 art students made ceramic desserts as part of this year’s art curriculum, and the LPCH team thought they looked good enough to eat. The students did, too. According to Hoffman, his morning classes had been working on decorating their ceramic pieces, and there was a whole table full of them when the afternoon class came in.
“They thought it was the best thing they’d ever seen,” Hoffman said. They even asked who had done the pieces, and Hoffman told them that they had – this was the work of their classmates, and their pieces were looking just as great. Part of the LPCH’s team’s visit also involved a discussion of LPCH’s expansion – the hospital is going to have more wall space, and the team is rethinking where and how to display artwork.
The ceramics dessert project the grade 4 students did inspired some spur-of-the-moment brainstorming. “Normally we display our 3-D work there for a year or so, and when they saw this dessert project, they started playing with the idea of taking it and putting it on permanent display in the cafeteria,” Hoffman said, something the team had not intended on when they first arrived at the school.
For the new wall space in LPCH’s clinic, the team also selected about 45 pieces of flatwork. Looking toward the future, Hoffman believes they will “absolutely be involved” with the project five years from now and beyond. “Giving to our community is so important,” he said. “I don’t know a better way to do that than to make people laugh and smile. Especially in a hospital situation.”
Silicon Valley Philanthropy Day is an annual event with awards presented by the Association of Fundraising Professionals Silicon Valley Chapter (AFP SVC) at a luncheon in mid-November to prominent individuals and organizations for their contributions to the community. This year, the event was held at the Hyatt Regency in Santa Clara, and 11 students from Harker were honored with awards for their work with the Pacific Autism Center for Education’s Youth Leadership Committee (PACE YLC). As PACE puts it, their mission is, “to provide high quality programs for individuals with Autism and its related developmental disabilities, so they may experience the satisfaction and fulfillment that come from learning, self-care, productive work, and interpersonal and community experiences.” The aim is to one day be the world leader in connecting a full range of services for persons with autism.
Of the 25 motivated high school students in the group, nearly half are from Harker, including: Jackie Jin, Isha Kawatra, Divya Sarathy and Jennie Xu, grade 12; Emily Chu, Kevin Lin, Isha Patnaik, Indulaxmi Seeni, Pranav Sharma, Apri Tang and Joseph Wang, all grade 11. Over the past two years, the group has raised more than $15,000 through various fundraisers, and this year they’re leading an anti-bullying seminar at local middle schools to talk about awareness and acceptance of students with disabilities.
The Harker School’s annual Global Empowerment and Outreach (GEO) Week, put on by the GEO Club, ended in late October. Thanks to candygram, wrist bands and sports bags sales, as well as pledges taken for vows of silence, the club will be donating just under $6,000 to the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunizations (GAVI). GAVI distributes vaccines to impoverished nations, helping to save the lives of children and break the poverty cycle.
GEO had so many candygram orders that “we had to make almost 200 more, I think,” said Cherry Xie, grade 12, the club’s public relations officer.
Xie also says a great number of people participated in the vow of silence, which was her personal favorite part of the week. “People got very competitive about the amount of money they could raise and it basically turned into a huge competition between me and two other people to see who could raise the most.” Pledges were given to those participating in the 24-hour vow of silence, and the three competitive students, “each ended up getting pledges from 60 or more people,” said Xie.
But the vows of silence didn’t stop with the students. Teachers also took the pledge challenge, including Bradley Stoll, a mathematics teacher on the upper school campus who teaches Xie’s calculus class.
Xie called thought it was “very bold” of him to do. “I really admire how he was willing to root for the cause even though it made teaching for him very difficult,” she says.
To illustrate just how quickly disease spreads, the club also put on a game where they had to “infect” each other with stickers, and see how many people had become “infected” by the end of the day.
The end of the event provided a natural time for reflection, as well as a time to consider what other ways there are to help. “I hope everyone realizes that there are many ways to help people in Third World countries, and that many aspects of their lives they don’t usually take time to appreciate are in fact life-or-death matters for others, specifically vaccinations and immunizations,” said Xie. “I also hope that people who did take the vow of silence reflect on how much of a difference they made by themselves, just by giving up something as simple as speech for a while, and that if we all support each other in fighting for a cause, we can achieve a lot.”
Cyrus Merrill’s grade 6 advisory recently stepped up their Kiva loans efforts, adding to their roster of lendees a jewelry maker in Peru, a Kenyan timber salesman, an artist in the Philippines and a farmer in Tajikistan. Merrill said he expects the group to be able to lend more money in the near future. To date, three of their nine loans have been paid back in full, with one 82 percenet repaid and another 76 percent repaid.
Raghav Sehtia, grade 11, was recently recognized for his efforts to fight hunger by being named a 2011 Stephen J. Brady STOP Hunger Regional Honoree. A short story on his achievement was published in the San Jose Mercury News on Aug. 22. He requested that the money be donated to charity. In March, Sehtia received the Platinum Award from the Second Harvest Food Bank for his work in organizing food drives for the past four years.
During the 2010 holiday season, Sehtia held a baked goods sale that raised approximately $1,800, which he then donated to the Second Harvest Food Bank. Sehtia calls volunteering a “passion” of his, and has volunteered at such places as the Sunnyvale Hindu Temple and the Good Samaritan Hospital. Kudos!
In early May a representative of the Shriners Hospitals for Children – Sacramento came to Harker’s middle school to accept a $1,200 check from the Peace2Peace club. The club’s eighth graders raised the money in their annual garage sale to help the Shriners. Glenn Reddy has been spearheading these efforts over the last three years and this year was assisted by Jeton Gutierrez-Bujari, Jeremy Binkley and Alex Thomas, backed up by Sophia Shatas, Hannah Baz and Christina Andrus.
The Shriners Hospitals for Children is a nonprofit network of 22 hospitals that gives aid to children with orthopedic conditions, burns, spinal cord injuries, cleft lips and palates. The specific hospital that Peace2Peace is supporting is located in Sacramento.
Advised by Steven Hewitt, the group solicited items to sell at their sale, asking for everything from toaster ovens to paintings on velvet in their creative announcement, stating, “one man’s garbage is another man’s treasure” as their philosophy. They requested the donations be placed in special red bins spotted around the Blackford campus. In mid-April, aiming for a dry weekend, they collected all the goods, set up shop and ran the sale from Reddy’s home.
“Over the past few years, we have raised money for places in Uganda, Costa Rica and India,” Reddy said. “We sat down and realized this year that people need help locally and not just in other countries. Since I have been a patient at Shriners myself, I recommended the Shriners hospital as a group to donate to.”
Harker upper school students donated 846 pounds of food to the Second Harvest Food Bank last month. The effort, spearheaded by parent Nina Yeats (Robert, grade 10) and avidly supported by sophomore Lori Berenberg, helped feed the hungry in San Mateo and Santa Clara counties, where as many as one in four goes to bed undernourished, according to Second Harvest.
Yeats says the idea to sponsor the drive grew out of a family dinner conversation. “Our family was bouncing around ideas — why donations peak during the holidays, what motivates,” she said. “I made a few inquiries, found interest and registered Harker for the Holiday Food Drive.” Working with Second Harvest and librarian Lauri Vaughan, Yeats arranged for 10 barrels to be dropped off on campus shortly after Thanksgiving.
Not satisfied with a low-key collection effort, Berenberg really got things rolling. “When I realized the can drive was beginning at Harker, I could not just stand by,” said Berenberg, who approached her class dean, Jeffrey Draper. She and Draper came up with the idea to turn the collection into an informal competition between classes. “I put the plan into action. I made posters, labeled the barrels, moved them to convenient locations, spoke at school and class meetings, and posted it on the daily bulletin,” she said.
The barrels were available at morning drop-off curbs, in the library, plus Dobbins and Manzanita halls. Every napkin bin in the Edge was also labeled with a reminder to encourage participation. In the end, the barrels were filled and nearly 700 pounds of food were donated to Second Harvest, the single largest nonprofit provider of food to low-income households in Santa Clara and San Mateo counties and the second largest food bank in the country.
In December, upper school students Daniela Lapidous and Shreya Indukuri, both grade 11, were featured in a segment on the Comcast Sports Net Bay Area program “49ers Total Access for Kids,” which is hosted by kids and geared toward young San Francisco 49ers fans.
Lapidous and Indukuri appeared on the show to talk about the green initiatives they were instrumental in enacting after receiving a grant from the Alliance for Climate Education (ACE) in 2009. The green projects featured included the organic garden and the smart meters that were installed at the Saratoga campus to monitor energy usage. The show also briefly touched on the green roof at Nichols Hall.
The entire episode can be viewed at the 49ers Total Access for Kids website. The segment featuring the girls begins 11 minutes into the program.
In keeping with the giving spirit of the holiday season, the lower school’s annual holiday toy drive delivered 925 toys to Sacred Heart Community Service in San Jose on the afternoon of Dec. 16. Grade 4 students loaded up a Harker delivery truck, which transported the toys from the Bucknall campus to Sacred Heart. There, members of the grade 4 student council helped unload the toys and received a tour of Sacred Heart’s facilities.
Toys donated included “sports equipment, board games, stuffed animals and all the popular toys of the season,” said Joe Connolly, lower school dean of students. “We even had toys that were purchased at FAO Schwarz.” Harker tech support manager Jesse Lara donated more than 125 toys from his personal collection to help the cause. “He originally collected them as an investment, but decided that boys and girls should play with them,” Connolly said. He later thanked the Harker community for its generosity, saying that Sacred Heart was “thrilled” with amount of toys they received. The donations will play a big part in assisting the 5,000 families that Sacred Heart will serve this holiday season.
“I continue to be touched by the incredible generosity of our parents and students,” Connolly said. “We organize these service projects so the children may realize the wonderful feeling of giving to others. It is uplifting to be able to partner with our parents in this worthy cause.”
Rohan Chandra, grade 10, is one of 10 first place national winners of the Scholastic BE BIG in Your Community contest, in which people submitted ideas to help improve their communities. Chandra will receive a $2,500 grant to help his idea come to life. His plan is to make and distribute “Earthquake Kits” to the senior citizens in his area, which runs an especially high risk of experiencing a major earthquake.
These kits would contain essentials such as water, a flashlight, first-aid supplies, medicine and non-perishable foods. Because Chandra’s community is very ethnically diverse, the kits would also come with instructions in various languages such as Spanish, Mandarin, Hindi, Urdu and Tagalog, so that more people will be able to clearly and quickly understand important information in the event of an earthquake-related emergency. The contest organizers provide the structure for winners to complete their proposals. Chandra’s was one of nearly 1,000 entries; more than 25,000 community members of all ages submitted for the contest: one top-10 winner was 55.