Kids Can Help

Winslow Students Working to Help Homeless
Morning Sentential, 10/23/2007

Last year Kendra Littlefield's community-based learning students at Winslow High School were one of 10 national winners of a USA Weekend magazine Make a Difference Day award.

This week they are up to another good deed.

"Raising the Roof Over the Homeless" is the theme for the chem-free dance students have been organizing for the last two months, Winslow High senior Melanie Gagnon said.

St Brenden School Students Prepare Packages for the Homeless
The Providence Journal 10/23/2007

Middle school students from the St. Brendan School, a pre-kindergarten to grade eight private school in Riverside, could say that after preparing 150 sandwiches and other snacks for the state’s homeless Friday afternoon. The bag lunch was paired with personal hygiene items and socks — which were collected by the school’s lower grade students — to make it an all-school project.

Principal Joseph Renzulli said the school got the idea from a St. Brendan parishioner, Anne Pari, of East Providence. She delivers food to the homeless every Friday and Renzulli agreed the school would take over her duties one Friday.

They titled the project “Bread Lines.”

Highschool Helps Homeless
Lakeshore Advance, 10/24/2007

South Huron District High School student, Taryn Anstett handed Trevor Johnson of the Youth Action Centre (YAC) in London $365 for the centre during a presentation on homeless youth at the high school last week.
The students were told to act as lobby groups for a law project and made their primary focus of the campaign, awareness of homelessness. They went above and beyond and started by collecting pocket change from students and teachers over two days, raising the money for homeless youth. “The response was incredible,” says Anstett.

Nine Year Old to Walk to Tally For Homeless
Tampa Bay's 10, 10/22/2007

In the past three years, Zach Bonner has collected supplies for Hurricane Charley victims, raised money for the “Teaching Tools Hillsborough Schools” program, organized a holiday party for kids displaced by Katrina and given away more than 750 backpacks for needy kids.

For his efforts, President Bush last year presented Zach with a volunteer service award. But the 9-year old is not slowing down, he’s just moving on to his next big project.

There is another article that I have saved and want to write about but the sudden flurry of youth and schools working to help people experiencing homelessness deserves some attention. Service learning is a valuable tool for all kinds of social issues and is a fantastic way to bring classroom subjects to real life. I wish that I had an opportunity to participate in projects like these when I was in school but alas, in the 90s it was all about HIV and DARE, subjects that would be a little more risque to develop service learning projects around.

Edit: A couple more...
Virginia Run Students walk for Homelessness
Students Collect Pennies for the Homeless