Since our inception, The Presentation School has made an overwhelming effort in the area of global responsibility. In any of our efforts to help those in need, our students have been enriched by the lessons planned by their teachers about the people, the culture, the politics, and the history of each of these locations.
In the 2011-2012 school year, our 8th grade class spent the afternoon at the migrant vineyard work's camps, brining supplies and speaking with the workers in Spanish. The entire middle school was invited to participate in the spring 30 Hour Famine, where students learned about the issues surrounding poverty and hunger around the world.
During the 2009-2010 school year, our
classes donated Thanksgiving food baskets to a local Sonoma
charitable organization and supported the American Legion Post 489
holiday project “Operation: With Love from Home.” Also, the students
participated in a "Coin War" to raise funds for Haiti
Relief and filled "Jared Boxes" with toys and fun supplies for patients
in the
Oakland Children's Hospital.
In the 2008-2009 school year, our global outreach program focused on Heifer International. Our classes joined with their buddy classes to purchase bees, chicks, ducks & geese, goats, sheep and one big water buffalo. Each class also donated Thankgiving food baskets to the St. Vincent de Paul Society. In the Christmas Spirit, each class adopted a family from the Sonoma Valley Vineyard Workers Alliance.
2004-2005: Our students focused on the victims of the tsunami in Indonesia. After researching needs, the entire student body and school community raised enough money to buy three boats for fishermen in a small village outside of Sri Lanka. These boats afforded the locals the opportunity to return to work and to earn their livelihood from the natural resource of the ocean.
2003-2004: Each class chose a local project for this year’s outreach.
2002-2003: We chose SMILE TRAIN as our global outreach project this year. Smile Train is an established medical cooperative, which annually provides free cleft surgery and related treatment for approximately 25,000 children around the world. We provided funds for nine such surgeries in underdeveloped countries.
2001-2002: Helping less fortunate students in this school year, we collected school supplies for BASKSHEESH which provided students with pens, pencils, notebooks, paper, erasers, and crayons in Nicaragua and Bosnia. We sent dollars to D.C. at our President’s request and participated in an EarthDay clean up at Curry Village in Yosemite.
2000-2001: Our fundraising efforts this school year were for the Kids Helping Kids Program of the United States Fund for UNICEF. Through our students’ money raising efforts, children’s lives in developing countries were greatly improved.
1999-2000: This school year we turned our efforts toward a village in India. We responded to a call from a Catholic priest working with the poor in a small southern village. We collected from the school community enough money to send him the necessary funds to build five homes, with four families living in each home. We also collected blankets for Afghanistan and supported a homeless shelter in Santa Rosa.
1998-99: When the Presentation students learned of the destruction left by Hurricane Mitch, they collected money, which was sent directly to an Episcopalian minister who was feeding 400 people a day in his Nicaraguan village. In addition, twenty-four cartons of food were collected and sent through the Nicaraguan Council General’s office to feed hurricane victims. The Presentation students found another way to show their concern for others this year. They donated over $1300.00 in pennies to the annual “Pennies of Leukemia Drive” sponsored by the Leukemia Society. On the home front, the class of 2000 provided a service to our local community by creating a community vegetable garden tended and cared for by the students and parent volunteers. Produce from the garden was donated to meals on Wheels and was available to community members who lived in the area.
1997-98: Raised funds and school supplies for a school in Colfirito, Italy, which had been demolished by the 1997 earthquake. Two student ambassadors from Presentation went to Italy in February, 1998, viewed the earthquake devastation, met with students and faculty from the school, and delivered the money raised by our school community.
