The Houston Independent School District schools involved are the International Baccalaureate schools in the Mirabeau B. Lamar High School feeder pattern: River Oaks, Oran Roberts, and Mark Twain Elementary Schools, Sidney Lanier Middle School, and Mirabeau B. Lamar High School. In past years, these schools have demonstrated their global sense of social responsibility by raising money for the victims of earthquakes in China, the tsunami in Indonesia, famine in Africa, and AIDS worldwide.
Their new local relief effort seeks to get all 2,100 IB schools throughout the world to take part in rebuilding the lives of students in Galveston Independent School District. A student leadership team with representatives from all five schools created a mission statement that will become part of the project's charter. The students presented both mission statement and charter to the HISD Board of Education at its November meeting. The board unanimously approved the endeavor for the five IB schools. The statement says that "The purpose of our organization is to aid the people in the Gulf Coast communities by providing relief and support for the victims of Hurricane Ike by raising international awareness and creating change in a community ravaged by natural disaster."
Students in Galveston worked with participating HISD students to choose "IB Helping Hands" as the name for the project, which will be the subject of a student-made documentary.HISD will support "IB Helping Hands" by helping with the creation and upkeep of a Web site for this humanitarian initiative. The district will also open a special account for funds raised and a post-office box for mail related to the project.
Lamar feeder pattern schools also donated more than 2,000 school supplies to their peers at the Galveston schools on October 21.
