On the evening of Sept. 12, senior Arun Shriram combined his love of music with his drive to help others by holding a fundraising concert on behalf of Make-A-Wish Greater Bay Area.
Called “Around the World!” the concert, held at Good Samaritan United Methodist Church in Cupertino, showcased music from several different cultures. More than a dozen other Harker students were involved in the effort.
And, appearing on saxophone, was Harker staff member Alejandro Osorio, who works at Harker’s tech help desk. Of Shriram, Osorio said, “He’s a very good musician. He comes from a musical family and in his own right is really talented.”
“The concert was a phenomenal success!” noted Shriram, who learned to play the Indian drums from his father.
“I started this concert after being inspired by my role as an Indian percussionist in the San Francisco World Music Festival. There, there were professional musicians from countries all around the world, such as Tibet, India, China, Latin America, Korea, Azerbaijan and Uganda. I knew that a lot of my friends at school were very talented in music, and being an Indian percussionist as well as an orchestral percussionist, I was able to bring in friends from both worlds and present music from different parts of the globe. That’s why I called it ‘Around the World,’ and I chose the charity Make-A-Wish because I feel that their mission really aligned with me.”
The concert “was absolutely magical,” noted Smriti Koodanjeri, Harker chemistry teacher. “The artistry, love and giving from so many Harker students brought tears to my eyes. The fusion of Eastern and Western music was simply outstanding!”
Each year, tens of thousands of volunteers, donors and supporters like Shriram advance the Make-A-Wish effort to grant the wishes of children diagnosed with life-threatening medical conditions. In the United States and its territories, on average, a wish is granted every 37 minutes.
The event has raised over $3,900 and donations are still being accepted until Sept.23. For more information on how to donate, email 16ArunS@students.harker.org.
Check out the performer’s promo video as well as a videotaken during the live concert!
Over Labor Day weekend, grade 9 chess enthusiast Shaunak Maruvada took second place in the expert section (U2200) at the CalChess State Championship. Facing formidable competition, Maruvada was undefeated in his section and finished in second place, missing two games to celebrate his birthday on Sept. 7.
In mid-August, Nathan Liu, grade 4, and Tiffany Zhao, grade 9, traveled to Germany to play piano at the Sulzbach-Rosenberg International Music Festival.
During a public concert held in the town hall, Liu and Zhao had the opportunity to play a duet (a Brahms waltz), in addition to doing solo performances. Liu had the distinction of being the youngest music player invited to the festival.
While in Germany, both Liu and Zhao learned from many of the world’s top musicians, and spent time at a historic music school located in a medieval castle.
“I learned how to cooperate with other musicians, as well as train my ear to listen to other people and play accordingly. My piano teacher asked me play a duet with Nathan there. It was also a great experience to mentor a younger musician,” Zhao said.
“It was a great experience,” said Liu. “One of the cool things is I made some good friends. I was really glad that Tiffany was there, so she could accompany me. I was amazed that everybody in the town was very into music and the posters of the festival were everywhere. I learned a lot from the more experienced musicians. Overall, it was an unforgettable two weeks!” he added.
Once again Harker’s English Language Institute (ELI) attracted an increasing number of students from all over the world seeking top-level English instruction. Held during the summer on both the lower and upper school campuses, the program was open to international students in the elementary division (ages 6-11) and secondary division (ages 12-16).
Many of the ELI participants signed up for the program in preparation for admission to American boarding schools and English-speaking schools worldwide. Small classes, a nurturing environment and experienced teachers helped foreign students develop speaking, reading and writing skills to ensure their readiness. This year ELI included a brand new offering for students who are very intent on staying in the United States and attending school by further supporting them with additional services such as standardized testing, multi-level diagnostic assessments and academic consultations.
A unique aspect of ELI is that students had opportunities to interact with Harker’s regular summer program participants. This allowed them to make new friends and practice their English with native speakers.
Eight-year-old Ivy Zhao, from China, said she previously had attended Harker’s Camp+, but this was her first time participating in the ELI program. “I liked making new friends as well as seeing old ones that I had made before at Camp+,” she recalled.
Lucas Jia, a 9-year-old first-time ELI participant, also from China, said he enjoyed Harker so much that he wished he could attend the school year-round. “Here is very fun!” he said, noting that hanging out with his friends at the lower school pool was one of his favorite activities. He also enjoyed recess time on the playground, making friendship bracelets and playing games in the gym.
“We had a very motivated and excited group of young learners,” enthused longtime ELI lower school instructor Karen Glovka, who this summer taught students in grades 3-5. (During the regular school year, Glovka teaches Spanish to Harker students in grades 4-5.)
“They worked hard to use English as much as possible, and they loved the many activities offered to them. Our teachers were also motivated and excited, working with academic levels from kindergarten through fourth grade. The T.A.s were equally incredible, providing classroom academic support and working alongside camp staff during enrichment activities. I think we could call ELI ‘extreme, limitless, instruction’ (in English, of course!),” she reported.
New to the program last year was a weeklong “Very Interesting Places” (VIP) tour. This option, available to all ELI students, proved so successful that it was offered again this year at the conclusion of ELI’s regular five-week academic session. According to ELI director Anthony Wood, the VIP tour was born from widespread interest from ELI participants in having more excursions to enhance their American social and cultural experiences.
During the VIP trip, students followed a specialized course of study to continue developing reading, writing and speaking competency while visiting university campuses, Silicon Valley businesses, places of interest and treasured landmarks. The tour was capped off with an overnight trip to the scenic California coast.
ELI initially began as a year-round boarding school program and evolved into the current summer program, which launched in 2004. For the past few summers, ELI has steadily grown in attendance, especially in the primary division.
International students come to Harker accompanied by a parent or local guardian and stay in nearby apartments or with area family and friends. Each ELI session is kicked off by a welcome orientation, and at the end of each session students participate in a touching closing ceremony.
“We keep growing and enjoying each summer!” said Glovka.
This year’s Summer Institute (SI) was marked by numerous exciting, first-time happenings. Highlights of the increasingly popular program included an inaugural summer science research class, a visit from a coding expert during a new computer course and a bake sale that raised money for the Humane Society.
Held on the upper school campus from June 15-Aug.7, SI was open to both Harker students and those from area schools in grades 6-12. SI allowed participants to get a jump start on the coming school year, as well as enrich their learning on topics of interest.
SI has two tracks: one designed for middle schoolers and another for high schoolers. Many students combined a morning academic program with afternoon activities. Falling under the academic umbrella was a new course called “Summer Science Research Society.” Taught by middle school science teacher Kathy Peng, the offering gave participants in grades 6-8 the opportunity to explore and research real world topics of individual interest.
Meanwhile, a chocolate chip cookie baking project and sale, sponsored by a new SI math class, raised $283.53 for the Humane Society of Silicon Valley (https://staging.news.harker.org/summer-institute-math-class-raises-money-for-humane-society). “Lots of math was used to calculate how many cookies we could bake within our limited class time and oven constraints. In addition, the students had to determine the shopping list and recalculate a recipe based on that,” reported Eileen Schick, who taught the three-week summer school course called “The Eagle Project: Math!”
Another new offering for grades 6-8 was “Beginning Python,” taught by Mike Schmidt, Harker’s middle school computer science department chair. Python is a widely used general-purpose, high-level programming language. Harker alumnus Abhinav Mathur, who graduated from the middle school in 2004, designed the instructional software Schmidt used in the class. Mathur, a former student of Schmidt’s, came to campus in June to speak to the 17 students enrolled in the course.
Mathur created a website called Pythonroom.com, an online learning environment for the Python programming language. He and another young entrepreneur, Keshav Saharia, founded a company called HulaLoop, which provides educational platforms on the web for various programming systems of which Pythonroom is currently their main focus.
“I had been using their product for my newly created Python programming course to teach middle schoolers the world of text-based programming. The kids were crazy about it and absorbed all the lessons like sponges!” recalled Schmidt. Pythonroom provides a solid foundation to the world of Python programming by allowing students to move forward at their own pace, he added.
“I think Pythonroom is great for beginners and it is really fun,” agreed Angela Cai, a rising grade 7 Harker student who attended the class.
“Abhi was a great (guest) teacher, and he gave great advice on finding easier ways to do certain problems,” added Stephen Yang, a rising grade 8 student at Miller Middle School.
Noting how excited he was to be back at Harker, Mathur said he was glad to give back to the school that provided him with so much. “We (at HulaLoop) are passionate about spreading coding knowledge to all students, and progressive schools like Harker make this goal achievable,” he said.
After the morning academic sessions, many SI students stayed on for the afternoon activity program, which included an array of specialty classes and recreational activities. Some students in grade 9 also signed up for the afternoon activities.
“We had a wide variety of weekly fun classes that the students signed up for, which this year included a field trip to the Oakland Zoo, an Ice Age Carnival, a Red, White and Blue Bash, and a visit to Golfland,” recalled K-8 history department chair Keith Hirota, who was in charge of SI academics and activity programming for the middle school students.
Although they were not eligible for the afternoon activity program, students in grades 10-12 were welcome to stay on campus to swim, study, shoot hoops and socialize. While the majority of the older students were primarily concerned with earing credits, many took time out for some summertime fun.
“The Summer Institute continues to grow and this year we had more than 1,300 students signed up for classes on the Saratoga campus!” reported Kelly Espinosa, director of summer and preschool programs.
Harker’s athletic department has hired Tomas Thompson as the new head coach of the school’s varsity girls basketball team. In addition to his collegiate playing experience, 45-year-old Thompson brings to Harker a wealth of coaching expertise, including both high school and club affiliations.
“We are very excited about Coach Thompson joining our staff as a part-time coach. He brings a tremendous amount of coaching and high level of playing experience to Harker,” said Dan Molin, athletic director for Harker’s upper school.
During the 2014-15 school year, Harker’s girls varsity team advanced to the CCS Division IV playoffs, finishing with a 12-12 overall record.
”I’m really looking forward to coaching the girls high school basketball team at Harker and developing the program. There is an incredible amount of potential and I believe it can be among the best with a lot of dedication by the players and coaches,” said Thompson, who was born and raised in Santa Cruz and now resides in San Jose.
A K-8 P.E. teacher at Hillbrook School in Los Gatos, Thompson previously spent nearly 12 years teaching K-5 P.E. at Harker’s lower school, while also serving as assistant coach for the upper school’s boys varsity basketball team. Thompson also has coached the grade 6 San Jose Cagers, an elite AAU girls basketball club, as well as at Los Altos High and Valley Christian (where in 2002 he was an assistant coach for the boys team that won the NorCal title).
Thompson is a graduate of the University of San Francisco, with a B.A. in exercise sports science. He played Division 1 basketball for the USF Dons, setting a record for the most 3-pointers in a game without a miss. A 1988 graduate of Soquel High, Thompson was also a standout on the Knights’ boys basketball team, where he held a record-breaking 1,948 career points and averaged 23 points per game during his senior season. He subsequently received the Santa Cruz Coast Athletic League’s Most Valuable Player Award.
There was a time when Eesha Chona, a rising senior and founder of an online community for children and teens whose loved ones are battling cancer, felt like she was leading a double life.
Chona’s world changed suddenly when her mother was diagnosed with invasive breast cancer a year and a half ago. That’s when she felt like she was leading two separate lives: one at home, the other at school. At home in Saratoga, she dealt with her mother’s diagnosis, surgery and recovery. At school, she pretended everything was fine.
“Life during the months of trying to accept my new reality was awful,” she said. “But I couldn’t complain as I wasn’t the one with breast cancer. I didn’t realize that when a person is diagnosed with cancer, everyone close to them is diagnosed as well.”
Feeling isolated and alone, she turned to her brother (Harker alumnus Aneesh Chona ’13) for support. Several weeks after their mother’s diagnosis, he encouraged and helped her to follow up on an idea she had to support others in her situation by launching a nonprofit organization called Association of Teens Against Cancer (ATAC).
ATAC now offers an online community for children and teens whose loved ones have been diagnosed with cancer. An interactive educational program on the website (www.atacnow.com) helps users understand the various adult cancers and their treatments. The site also contains a directory of hotlines that teenagers can use during a crisis.
Chona stressed that her brother’s help was and is still vital to ATAC’s success. “I turned to him with my initial idea and together [we] advanced it. He mentored and guided me in marketing an organization and launching it. He also oversees the financials of the company, does the accounting to keep track of donations and important financial metrics, and analyzes the overall efficiency of the organization,” she explained, adding that her brother also runs the ATAC Philadelphia office and networks with local nonprofits interested in partnering with them.
In addition to her work on ATAC, Chona participated in AVON’s 39-mile walk for breast cancer awareness; she was later selected to join its national youth crew to help out with the walk. She also has worked extensively with Bay Area Cancer Connections (BCC), a Palo Alto-based nonprofit organization that provides support for cancer patients and their spouses.
At the request of BCC, she authored an online monthly journal, titled “A Teen’s Journey With Her Mother” (http://www.bcconnections.org/author/eesha/), to help incorporate support for children of cancer patients into their program. This summer, she also started her own therapy class at BCC: “Photo Stories: A Hands-On Family Collage Class.”
“My mother and I always bonded through crafting collages together. After she was diagnosed with cancer, the collages I made on my own supported her through her treatment. I felt that since BCC lacked a class involving children, the best class would be one that brings families together,” she said, noting that she hopes to spread the class to other nonprofits in the Bay Area.
Recently, Chona also started working with Shanti, a nonprofit organization that provides financial and emotional support to San Francisco’s most vulnerable women living with life-threatening illnesses. Chona’s involvement with Shanti helped her realize that not everyone diagnosed with cancer has access the proper treatment or care. That realization prompted her to return to her roots in India, home to some of the poorest populations in the world, where breast cancer has become the leading cancer in the country.
“Over the past two years, I’ve raised money through ATAC and have decided to ‘atac’ 11 specific, untapped villages near my parents’ home city. I’ve raised enough money to sponsor two villages to receive breast screening and prostate exams as well as mammograms … basic health care that these men and women would otherwise never obtain,” she said. When BCC found out about Chona’s work in India, the organization offered to further support her cause by donating prosthetics, wigs, scarves and specialized clothing to any individuals who are found to have cancer and need ongoing invasive treatment.
Chona also has partnered with Roko Cancer, a nonprofit based in London for which she recently became an international grand ambassador. Come spring, her role with Roko Cancer will take her to India for an intensive, hands-on experience working in the villages ATAC sponsors. She will assist with patient exams/screenings, as well as meet with the children of patients.
“Not only are we sponsoring villages for cancer screenings, but will also start providing a channel to support ongoing care with supplies for those individuals who are positively diagnosed, which is something they would not have been able to afford due to their vulnerable circumstances,” she said.
Last summer Chona became a local leader with the American Cancer Society (ACS). As the youth rally and engagement lead for ACS’s Silicon Valley chapter, she was responsible for reaching out to Bay Area high schools and providing them with information about ACS and the benefits of teen involvement. In addition, as the Pink Ambassador for all Bay Area high schools, she visited many schools to educate teens about cancer, screening and prevention, as well as ways in which they could reach out and support cancer patients. She was offered this position again for the upcoming year and is looking forward to continuing to educate and empower more teenagers across the Bay Area.
Recognizing Chona’s overall outreach efforts, the nonprofit organization ZERO Breast Cancer nominated her for its “Honor Thy Healer” award. By using her circumstances as a tool to reach out and help others, Chona said she has increased her knowledge, not just about cancer, but also about starting a nonprofit, marketing it, coding a website and updating features.
I addition to its website, ATAC is also on Facebook and Twitter, and soon will be on the App Store with an iPhone App she created called Send a Ribbon. The app enables children to support their loved ones who have cancer by drawing a personalized cancer ribbon and sending it via email with a caring message.
“Hopefully ATAC will broaden its horizons from five nonprofits and hundreds of users to thousands all across the globe, teaching children to not be scared of reality and helping them understand that they have their own community a few computer keys away, consisting of friends who share and care,” said Chona.
This article originally appeared in the summer 2015 Harker Quarterly.
At 8:15 a.m. on Aug. 6, 1945, the United States dropped an atomic bomb over Hiroshima in an effort to end World War II. The bomb, nicknamed “Little Boy,” directly killed more than 80,000 people, including 330 students and teachers at Hiroshima Jogakuin Senior High School.
The attack, which destroyed nearly 70 percent of the buildings in the city, went on to take the lives of more than 140,000 people through radiation poisoning and injuries. The controversy over the death toll from the Hiroshima and (a few days later) Nagasaki nuclear bombings versus that of the alternative – a physical invasion of the Japanese home islands – continues, but few will argue that nuclear war is acceptable in any form, under any circumstances, today.
On the 70th anniversary of the bombing, the rebuilt Hiroshima Jogakuin Senior High School welcomed students from Russia, Japan and the United States for the 18th annual Critical Issues Forum, a student conference on nuclear disarmament. It was the first time that the conference was held in Hiroshima, the first city to experience nuclear devastation.
This year’s Critical Issues Forum, held April 2-4, focused on the humanitarian approach to nuclear disarmament. It was co-sponsored by the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey and the Hiroshima for Global Peace Plan Joint Project Executive Committee. Students presented their research, listened to talks by survivors and visited the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum.
The conference also marked The Harker School’s first year of participation.
“I’ve always been interested in global policy issues,” said Manan Shah, grade 10. “Having debated a great deal about nuclear weapons and their potential violent effects not only on tight-knit human communities but also the world at large, I found the Critical Issues Forum a unique opportunity to promote real change.”
Shah was part of the Harker team of f our students who researched, wrote and presented their findings on using past events with global humanitarian consequences to determine prior successful initiatives. The team comprised Shah, Ethan Ma, grade 12, Alexander Sikand, grade 11, and Zarek Drozda, grade 11. Two of the students, Sikand and Ma, went to Japan to present the team’s findings.
“In spite of the catastrophic humanitarian consequences of use of nuclear weapons, the issues of national security, military and strategic aspects have always taken precedence in the discussion of nuclear weapons,” Shah said. “The research for this year’s topic centered on discussion about the implications of potential human catastrophe as a result of the use of nuclear weapons and what must be done to avoid any such future occurrence.”
Harker held an assembly to announce the partnership with the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies back in October 2014, at which three representatives talked to students about the conference, their past experiences and the importance of this work.
Ma was in that audience during the discussion and was inspired to participate.
“I think the topic itself is something that’s specific and one that students usually don’t get to study in great detail,” Ma said. “I found it interesting and a bit mysterious.”
The team of students spent about three months doing basic research on the topic of nuclear nonproliferation under physics teacher Eric Nelson’s guidance.
After completing the research, the idea that generated the most enthusiasm from the team involved researching past events with global humanitarian consequences (including abolishment of slavery, prohibition of land mines, ban of chemical weapons, and reduction in the use of ozone-depleting CFCs) to determine prior successful initiatives, Shah said.
After deciding to move forward with the topic, the team broke the work into subtopics; each student studied a subtopic, and then the team worked together to write a collaborative paper and presentation.
“During the research for this forum, we increased our understanding of the importance of nuclear disarmament, the current status of nuclear disarmament, and the issues and challenges in the disarmament initiatives,” Shah said. “I strongly believe that educating young high school students around the world on disarmament and nonproliferation issues will have a significant impact towards a world free of nuclear weapons, and I feel very fortunate to be a part of this program.”
Lessons from Hiroshima
After completing the research paper, Sikand and Ma made their way to Hiroshima for the conference, a trip that would inspire in them an abiding compassion for those who have been directly impacted by nuclear weapons.
“I thought it was really shocking,” Sikand said. “I mean, you read about the nuclear bomb and you read about its usage in the text books and you know that it’s this devastating event that took thousands of lives, but when you’re there in the museum and try to fathom how it must have felt and looked … no one who wasn’t there will fully understand, but we did our best.”
The team learned that “Little Boy,” the 15-kiloton bomb dropped on Hiroshima, was indeed small compared with the Soviet Union’s Tsar Bomba of 1961 – the most powerful nuclear weapon ever detonated at 50 megatons.
“Even looking at this massive destructive event [Hiroshima]… one of the professors there described [the destruction] as looking [like] at gunshot wounds from the 1860s,” Sikand said, while the destructive capabilities of today’s nuclear weapons parallel the damage done to individuals by modern battlefield weapons. “The bomb used in Hiroshima was a lot different from the capabilities that we have today,” Sikand noted.
Prior to traveling to Hiroshima, Sikand studied the use of the atomic bomb in Japan under then-President Harry Truman.
“We basically tried to justify the use and talked about how it probably saved this many American lives; it ended the war this many years, this many months earlier than it would have otherwise,” he said. “We debate it, but after going there, you realize that there is much left [to debate]. Think about the devastation to the immediate victims of the bomb – those who were completely incinerated, those who died of radiation poisoning days, weeks, months after; increased prevalence of cancer and even now, descendants of survivors have been marginalized by Japanese society because no one wants to marry them because of fear of birth defects.”
Although Shah did not join his classmates in Japan, the work he did alongside them while they prepared a college-level paper to present in Hiroshima allowed him to develop strong bonds with them and a desire to do more on the subject. “If one is looking for an opportunity to make a real difference in nuclear proliferation issues, participation in the Critical Issues Forum is a game changer,” Shah said. “The issue of use of nuclear weapons affects each and every one of us and our participation will ensure a better, safer and more peaceful tomorrow.”
While in Japan, Ma and Sikand visited the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, which has exhibits depicting the city before and after the bombing. Established in 1954, the museum works to abolish nuclear weapons and bring about lasting world peace.
“Being able to be in the same place that you know such great calamity has happened and after that, listening to the survivor stories, visiting the atomic bomb museum – that all just kind of cements it,” Ma said. “It left a deep impression.”
Ma said that this experience, and the knowledge and perspective it gave him, has shown him the importance of what those who are involved in the work to end the use of nuclear weapons are doing. “It will always be a part of me,” he said.
Since launching the Capri Sun Recycling Program in March 2014, the middle and upper school campuses have collected and shipped a combined total of about 70,000 Capri Sun containers for recycling.
The middle school’s Green Club began the program to keep Capri Sun drink containers out of landfills by using a service called TerraCycle, which collects and recycles materials that are difficult to recycle. The money generated from the effort was donated to environmental programs.
Points earned through the program by the middle school campus were used to make donations totaling nearly $1,000 to help fund 360 miles of trails built in national and state parks, eight acres of wildlife land adopted, 8 tons of carbon removed from the atmosphere and various green school initiatives, according to middle school mathematics teacher Margaret Huntley.
“We still have a bit left to donate,” she said. “Or we can use this money to further fund our own school-based green initiatives if we wish.”
Meanwhile, at the upper school, members of the Student Council took on Capri Sun recycling efforts. Council representatives reported that collections during the last school year had been going well, with at least several hundred dollars’ worth of funds now slated for future green efforts at Harker.
The Capri Sun Recycling Program is part of Harker’s recent overall schoolwide effort to “go green.”
Near the end of the school year, the Global Empowerment Outreach (GEO) Club raised money for the Malaria Consortium, an organization that provides malaria testing for children in Southeast Asia and Africa. During a week in the spring, GEO members sold tie-dyed, hand-painted drawstring bags and milk teas in various flavors. Students and faculty could purchase a pre-painted bag, request a design or paint a bag themselves. All proceeds were donated to the Malaria Consortium, which GEO members had selected to support (out of five possible charities) at the beginning of the year.
Around the same time, DECA chapter members collected gently used shoes for Soles4Souls, a nonprofit dedicated to fighting poverty worldwide. Founded in 2006, Soles4Souls’ mission is to collect new and used shoes and clothing from individuals, schools, faith-based institutions, civic organizations and corporate partners, then distribute them via both direct donations to people in need and by provisioning qualified micro-enterprise programs designed to create jobs in poor and disadvantaged communities.
During Autism Awareness Month in April, several upper school students helped organize and performed in “Light It Up Blue,” a benefit concert held at Santana Row that raised more than $700 for the Pacific Autism Center for Education (PACE).
During the lively afternoon concert, solo artists and bands took to the stage, donating their time and tips to the organization, which provides services to people with autism and their families. Performances by Harker students Gurutam Thockchom, grade 11, Jonathan Yiu, grade 11 and Satchi Thockchom, grade 9, kicked off the event.
Harker senior Allison Kiang serves as the president of PACE’s Youth Leadership Committee (YLC), which was responsible for organizing and running the event. In addition to the live performances, YLC members ran a booth called Operation Enable, which included activities to raise awareness about what it is like to live on the autism spectrum.
Members of the YLC come from various local high schools. Joining together, they spent months planning the fundraiser, from booking the venue to contacting bands and organizing event details.
Founded in 1989, PACE provides programs for individuals with autism and other related developmental disabilities. PACE operates a school for clients (ages 6-22) and offers early-intervention therapy services. The organization also operates group homes for children and adults. PACE’s assistant executive director, Karen Kennan, said she was very impressed by the Harker student’s “commitment to philanthropy and their willingness and eagerness to volunteer and give back to the community.”
Photos for this story were provided by PACE, YLC. More in-depth coverage of the benefit concert can be found in this article published by Harker’s upper school student newspaper, “The Winged Post.”