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December 1, 2000 |
Volume I
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Broad Meadows ODW Students
Address U.N. Gathering
Here is the draft of the remarks made by 13 year old Mary Bloomer and by 11 year old Laura Bloomer, on Nov. 27 at the International Year of the Volunteer 2001 Gala, held in Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in New York City. UN Secretary General Kofi Annan spoke also. Academy award winning actor Glenn Close introduced Mary and Laura Bloomer of ODW Broad Meadows, Quincy, MA:
Glenn Close: Our next speaker is 13 year old Mary Bloomer. Mary is in the 8th grade at Broad Meadows Middle School in Quincy, Massachusetts. She is her city's cross country champion and she is a co-founding member of a new, student run, volunteer organization called Operation Day's Work USA. Mary will be followed by a two year veteran of Operation Day's Work, her 11 year old sister, Laura Bloomer.
Mary Bloomer: Operation Day's Work is only two years old. Any school in the U.S. can join. With the help of USAID, Operation Day's Work helps educate children in one, poor, developing country each year. We students vote on which country to work with. There are over 30 different schools from 11 states involved. This is not charity. We are kids helping kids to help themselves.
We plan by email for months, to do one day of sponsored, community service locally to help children globally. We raise a lot of money on our day's work.
The first year, we raised enough to expand an agriculture and literacy program in rural Haiti. The next year, we raised enough to help run an orphanage in El Salvador. This year, we voted to help children in Nepal.
Operation Day's Work helps us, also. The kids who participate learn about developing countries. We learn about their culture, land features, and most importantly their needs. It's not all work and learning. It is also very fun. As we work with our friends we laugh, take pictures and have a good time. And at night, when we go to sleep, we feel really good about ourselves, knowing that in the hours of work we did…we could have changed someone's life dramatically. Doing good … really does … feel good.
Another student in Operation Day's Work, Erin Merkl of Pius High School in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, once said, "Operation Day's Work has affected me tremendously… the person I was, the person I am, and the person I hope to become …opening my eyes to the world around me, as well as to the power of youth."
Here is another member of Operation Day's Work, my sister, 6th grader Laura Bloomer.
Laura Bloomer: Hello. I've been volunteering in Operation Day's Work for two years. I have joined this campaign because I feel it is wrong to do hurtful or unacceptable things to people, just because they are poor, different or because they are children.
Thank you, to the U.S. Steering Committee and to ABC and Disney for giving us this opportunity to tell a little about how we combine community service with global service.
It takes months of meetings after school to plan our "Day's Work." Everyone is welcome. Anyone can join and volunteer their time to try to help change the world. When all the kids arrive at our meetings, we get settled down and ready for what comes next. We all participate. It's a time to talk and share ideas. We forget everything else and focus like lasers on children and how we can help them to help themselves.
One extra thing we did was collect and ship 25 boxes of clothing and medical supplies to the orphanage in El Salvador. Airline Ambassadors, a group of volunteer flight attendants, helped us by flying the clothes to El Salvador for free.
If we can help, you can, too. You can help by getting a school involved in Operation Day's Work. Thank you, UN , for making 2001 the Year of the Volunteer. Volunteers are never too young to care, or to take action.
As Mother Theresa once said, "We can do no great things, … only small things, … with great love."
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Host a Member of ODW in Norway!
Hello everyone! This is Katie Kruse from Patrick Henry High in Minneapolis. I have been in touch with several people from the Operasjon Dagsverk program in Norway. A former national committee member from Norway is going to be in the U.S. Her name is Ly and she is very enthusiastic!
She is coming here to see how ODW is going in the U.S. She is coming in mid-January sometime. She will be in D.C. for a while. But she would also love to visit ODW schools across the country. She is going to come to Minneapolis. It would be great if some other schools would host her as well. This is a great opportunity to get advice of how to make ODW better. It would also be a lot of fun to spend a few days with her! We want to make Ly feel welcome here; the Norwegian OD has helped the U.S. so much in the past years.
If any of you would be willing to host her for a few days, contact ODW Headquarters. Hope to hear from you soon!
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Pilgrim Park is Getting Ready
for a Great ODW Year!!
By Elizabeth Vieira and Tom Schalmo
At Pilgrim Park, we have started planning a Lock-In as a fundraiser for ODW. We will most likely go to a local facility with an indoor pool and basketball court, then we would go back to school and have a dance and movie.
We are calling local businesses and trying to get as much donated or discounted as possible. Our principal hasn't approved of it yet, but our associate principal is very optimistic that it will happen. Until we get it approved, we are pretty much focusing on that right now.
We haven't started planning our actual "workday" yet, but we plan to start sending letters and brochures to local businesses in January. Our tentative date for the workday date is Wednesday, April 25, 2000.
We have 28 students out of the 125 participating split into 3 committees, Publicity (making posters, updating bulletin boards, and writing announcements), Documentary (taking pictures and videos), and Cultural Day (planning Cultural Day, a day in which each the committee teaches lessons about Nepal in each of the "core" classes... English, Reading, Social Studies, Science, and Math). These committees will start working soon.
In addition, we have started calling local businesses about a raffle as
well. We may tie it in with our lock-in, but we're not sure yet.
Finally, we have a new website and e-mail up and running! Our website is pilgrimpark.tripod.com/odw@ppms, and our e-mail is ppms_odw@lycos.com. Check them out!!
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Wisconsin Heights Middle School
Sends Out News Bulletin
The following is a news bulletin prepared by Wisconsin Heights Middle School:
Operation Day's Work - USA (ODW) is a national organization that is run by students. ODW gives support to show students the vibrant and diverse world around them while they learn about the importance of volunteering and community building. It allows young people to show the world that they can be real leaders, and that a good idea can make a powerful difference in helping people improve their own lives. Each year, students select a developing country in which to fund a project related to education. Students across the US then review and vote on project proposals in the selected country, deciding which activities to educate and enlist the help of their classmates, school administration, local leaders, and community. Also, students organize a work day to raise funds for the project they have helped select. Individual schools and students will choose what the work day will entail, from mowing lawns and working in offices in the community, to getting sponsors for the community service projects like cleaning a park.
Wisconsin Heights Middle School elected four student delegates to the national ODW convention in Bemidji, Minnesota. The four students were Joe Winandy, Abby Denman, Ashley Ditmarsen and Alice Smith. The students read the existing Constitution, as well as the changes proposed by the National Committee, and suggested changes of our own. These were grammatical errors and language interpretations ("worldly" into "global"), slight changes to improve flexibility, changes to expand our horizons (thirteen National Committee members instead of eight) and improvements (we hope) upon the original Operation: Day's Work structure. We changed the voting methods, allowing each school to choose their own national representative. We decided which country to support. Our school nominated Mozambique and did a presentation on it with another middle school that also nominated Mozambique. After a confidential, close vote, Nepal won. Nepal is famous for Mount Everest and the Himalayas. It is also one of the world's poorest countries, where child labor and illiteracy are rampant.
Students at Wisconsin Heights Middle School have already sold raffle tickets raising $200.00! WHMS hopes to get more students and the community involved. Please, if you're interested find out more, log unto odw.info.usaid.gov or stop by Ms Schultz-Becker's room Mondays from 3:00-4:00 p.m. You can make a difference in the world!
Ashley Ditmarsen and Alice Smith contributed to this news bulletin.
Watch for the next ODW update!
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Broad Meadows Plans ODW Assembly
ODW Broad Meadows is building up strength for our school's ODW-USA kickoff assembly.
Our assembly will be held in our auditorium. Every student in grades 6, 7 and 8 will attend. Our principal supports ODW 100 %. As a special guest speaker, we are flying in a medical doctor and author named Dr. David Parker. He has been to Nepal and has powerful photos of children in Nepal. He wrote a book about children in Nepal and other developing countries. The book is excellent. It is called "Stolen Dreams." Dr. Parker will show slides he took in Nepal and he'll tell us about life in Nepal. Then we will take over and tell what students CAN DO to help children like those in the slides. We're going to invite students to channel their anger and sadness into positive action by joining Operation Day's Work-USA.
After our assembly, we are taking Dr. Parker to a nearby high school where one of our grads, sophomore Elizabeth Bloomer, has set up a whole school assembly there. Dr. Parker will repeat his slide show. Elizabeth will try to get those students to start an ODW group at that school. That school is Archbishop Williams High School, Braintree, Massachusetts. We're trying to spread ODW in our school and in neighbor schools. Wish us luck!
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A Message from ODW Headquarters
I hope you enjoy this first issue of the Operation Day's Work Newsletter. At the convention in Minnesota, students made it a priority to have this newsletter and an internet discussion boardroom to keep up to date with what schools are doing. We now have both!
To start out, the newsletter will come out at the beginning of each month. It will be mailed to schools and put on our web site in the "ODW News" section. Please send in updates from your school, creative writing about ODW, or anything else you think should be included by the end of each month.
The web boardroom can be found in the "ODW Boardroom" section of the web site. We have also created a boardroom for ODW advisors. Please check the boardroom regularly and put up messages, questions, or anything else you would like to share. You can attach documents, and link to web sites in the boardroom. You can also start new topics for discussion by clicking the "POST" button in the upper left hand corner.
It is very important to share what your school is doing with everyone else in ODW so that we can learn from each other and be as effective as possible. I hope that you will use the newsletter and online boardroom as tools to do that!
Check out the boardroom and the online newsletter at our web site: http://odw.info.usaid.gov
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