In celebration of Global Youth Service Day 2009, People to People International's Houston, Texas Student Chapter is planning to sponsor a book drive to support a library in Galveston, Texas that was destroyed by flooding from Hurricane Ike during the fall. Each member of the chapter will reach out to the community to ask for book donations. Additionally, the chapter will engage others in their project by involving younger children from the area in the initiative. For more information and to support this initiative, please contact Dhruv Goel at dhruvgoel2003@yahoo.com.

Over 50 students from The Learning Skool-House Afterschool (K-4 grade), Pearland, Texas, and other schools in Pearland will be creating artwork and/or writing poems to make bookmarks throughout April.

The artwork will be scanned into the computer and then be processed in Adobe Photoshop. Bookmarks will be designed using Microsoft Publisher. After that, the printed bookmarks will be cut and laminated at Office Depot to ensure that the products are of high quality. The laminated bookmarks will be cut individually by volunteers to reduce the cost.

The bookmark fair will be held to sell the bookmarks ($2.50 each) made by these young artists and writers to raise funds, and all proceeds will go directly to the earthquake victims in Sichuan, China.

Then, the raised funds will be sent to a group of students in Dujiangyan, Sichuan, China in May 12th, 2009, a year after the earthquake hit Sichuan. The earthquake caused more than 90,000 people dead in May 12,2008 and left millions homeless.

This activity is a collaboration between The Learning Skool-House Afterschool and Grace, Sharon, and Eric Li, the founders of We Care Act, a new organization charged to help the disaster victims.

If you would like more information or have any questions, please contact:

Ms. Huang
wecareact1@yahoo.com

We'll be out in force throughout the neighborhood offering to do safety walk-through of homes, distributing smoke alarms, batteries and first aid kits to homes in the east Portland neighborhood of Hazelwood on April 25 & 26.

We're going to need everyone’s help in reaching our goal of 1,500 homes. This is our opportunity to help prevent emergencies and disasters in an at-risk neighborhood.

America Reads Mississippi(ARM) AmeriCorps members along with Junior Citizen Corps Club(JCCC) members, volunteers and other AmeriCorps organizations will coordinate outdoor recreation activities for the community. Children will explore various outdoor activities geared toward their age group and skills; perform outdoor related recreation activities; and participate in the learning sequences in a "how-to" workshop(s) concerning outdoor recreational activities.

In the Columbus area, there are 603 special needs children ages 5 - 21 in the public school system. Our plan is to teach a Basic Aid Training on Saturday, April 25th to teach special needs students basic first aid and safety skills showing that all youth can be prepared for emergencies. We also would like to provide each participant with a first aid kid that they can keep and use.

Youth learning to connect with the community by planning and hosting a Community Service Fair.

The Community Service Fair will focus on Disaster Prepardness, Environmental issues/Global Warming, and Health and safety. Students will create information displays of their own, and contact organizations which specialize in these areas. The community will be able to come to this fair and leave with the satifaction of knowing the learned something new.

There will be seminars during the fair on the following: (specific schedule of seminars will be released later)

Outline:
Activities for April 25th, 2009

1. Fire prevention walk-thru-
2. Smoke Detector Batteries for low income households.
3. American Red Cross bags
4. American Red Cross Fire Prevention Door Hangers
5. Message from American Red Cross NTCC CEO and Board Chair
6. possible paid advertisement (part of grant)

Needs: Materials laid out in budget proposal
American Red Cross Vehicles possibly both ERV’s
10-20 youth volunteers (boys and girls clubs)
10 DAT team members as chaperone’s
Publix subs and sodas (part of grant) as lunch provided to volunteers