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Students who found new ways to give back.
1. 1/18/12 Students who found new ways to give back. - NYTimes.com
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Five Do-Gooders
By KATIE ZEZIMA, ABBY ELLIN and INYOUNG KANG
Published: January 7, 2011
An SAT Savior RECOMMEND
TWITTER
Enlarge This Image A FEW weeks after
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he took the SAT,
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Jason Shah MAIL
realized something PRINT
more vexing to
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him than algebraic
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formulas or word
usage problems: that many students
can’t afford or access programs to
prepare them for the test, and college.
The epiphany came in a West
Philadelphia middle-school classroom
Maurice Handel
that his sister ran as part of her Teach
Elizabeth Jane Handel shares the gift
of reading. for America commitment. Many
students had trouble with reading and
Related spelling, and Mr. Shah, then 16,
Strategy | Community Service: wondered how they would be able to
Does Helping Out Help You?
(January 9, 2011) study for the SAT in a few years.
Enlarge This Image He returned home to New Smyrna
Beach, Fla., raised $10,000 from family
and friends, found Web developers and
began INeedaPencil.com, a Web site
that offers free SAT prep, including
lessons that use conversational Log in to see what your friends are sharing on nytimes.com. Log In With Faceboo
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language and sports analogies and full
practice exams.
What’s Popular Now
“Certain students either don’t do well Web Site Will Shut Down to Paula Deen Says She Has
on the SAT because they don’t have the Protest Antipiracy Bills Type 2 Diabetes
resources or don’t take the SAT because
they think only rich kids take the test,”
Michael Piazza
Mr. Shah says. “It just bothers me
Jason Shah started a Web site offering MOST POPULAR
free SAT prep. deeply that it’s such a simple problem
E-MAILED BLOGGED SEARCHED VIEWED
Enlarge This Image that doesn’t have to exist.”
1. Campaign Stops: For God So Loved the 1 Percent ...
Now a senior at Harvard, Mr. Shah still 2. Well: How Exercise May Keep Alzheimer's at Bay
runs the site. The project led him to 3. Op-Ed Contributor: My So-Called Bipolar Life
www.nytimes.com/2011/01/09/education/edlife/09youngleaders-t.html?pagewanted=all 1/6
2. 1/18/12 Students who found new ways to give back. - NYTimes.com
major in sociology and minor in 4. Chef Has Diabetes, and Some Say ‘I Told You So’
computer science, which gave him skills 5. Well: Personal Health: Lifelines for People With Hearing Loss
to run and change the site on his own. 6. Young, in Love and Sharing Everything, Including a Password
7. Maureen Dowd: Hunting, Dear Sir? Delighted!
About 36,000 students have used it in 8. Editorial: Preaching Division in South Carolina
the last three years, Mr. Shah says, and 9. A Good Appetite: Sorcerer’s Apprentice Hosts a Dinner
students report, on average, seeing a 10. Opinion: The Rise of the New Groupthink
200-point increase in SAT score after Go to Complete List »
using the service — perhaps so high
because these students have had no
Dallas Jessup teaches girls to defend
previous help, he says.
themselves.
Enlarge This Image Mr. Shah won a $15,000 grant in a
campus business competition and
participated in a social innovation
incubator. “Being in college and being
surrounded by people doing really big-
picture initiatives,” he says, “I learned
President and Mrs. Bush honored Mike
from people’s mistakes about where to
Browne for his campaign. get funding, how to market the idea,
Enlarge This Image the flow of the Web site. It looks very
different than when it was launched.”
Mr. Shah says that the site has taught
him more about social
entrepreneurship than sitting in a
classroom and studying business
theory.
“You’re actually doing something,” he
Paul Arnold
says. “I learned a ton in college, but I’m
Mitch Arnold has sent soccer a hyper-practical person in a lot of
equipment to 44 nations.
ways, and you’re dealing with the day-
to-day challenges of things like, ‘How
do you help a student across the country?’ Or dealing with the
pressure of the server going down while you’re in the middle of a
sociology lecture.” — KATIE ZEZIMA
‘That New Book Smell’
WHEN Elizabeth Jane Handel was a young girl, her mother would
read books to her each night. A middle-school project — sorting old
books to donate to other schools — made Ms. Handel realize just how
lucky she was. She wanted to share the gift of reading, and a family
friend mentioned that women at the prison where she worked had
extremely limited resources.
Ms. Handel started A Book From Mom, a program to donate
children’s books to the women’s prison in Framingham, Mass. “I
thought if I put books in the prison, mothers could select a book when
their child came to visit and it would help ease the tension of the
visits,” says Ms. Handel, now 21 and a junior at Barnard College.
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3. 1/18/12 Students who found new ways to give back. - NYTimes.com
Ms. Handel requires all books be new, because “every child deserves
that new book smell.” Parents choose which book to read with their
children, and the child takes the book home as a gift. Ms. Handel, who
collects the books at drives and mails them, has since expanded the
program to other prisons in her home state of Massachusetts, and
dads can now participate.
An English major who wants to be a writer, Ms. Handel didn’t even
mention the organization when applying to college. She has benefited,
though. Running it has helped her develop public speaking and
leadership skills, she says. “It’s given me a lot of courage.” — KATIE
ZEZIMA
Score One for Peace
FOUR years ago, Mitch Arnold was sitting in his church in Fort
Atkinson, Wis., listening to a speech by a school principal from Haiti.
“What really got me was when he said that kids play soccer in dirt and
rock fields,” says Mr. Arnold, now 18. “They don’t have nice fields.
They use cans as goals. Here we have these nice fields with real goals,
real nets, real soccer balls, whereas they use whatever they can find
because they really want to play.”
Peace Is the Goal was born. The charitable foundation aims to spread
peace through “the world’s game.” Using his own money as well as
donations, Mr. Arnold bought balls, pumps, goals, shinguards, cleats,
uniforms and field cones and sent them to Haiti.
Since then, he has sent more than $27,000 worth of soccer equipment
to impoverished regions of 44 countries.
Next up, he hopes to go to the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities or
the University of Wisconsin, Madison, to study psychology and
Spanish. He plans to continue his charity in college. As he noted in his
application essays: “My gifts of compassion, peace and action would
only be equaled by my intellectual gifts that I would utilize in the
classroom and the lab. As a college student, I aim to grow as I help
others to grow.” — ABBY ELLIN
Putting Up a Fight
WHEN Dallas Jessup heard the statistics — that one in four girls
would be sexually assaulted and that thousands of others are
abducted each year — she wanted to fight back, something that comes
easier to her than most others. A black belt in tae kwon do at 13 and
an expert in Filipino street fighting, Ms. Jessup wanted to share her
self-defense skills with girls.
“I have the skills to protect myself,” Ms. Jessup, now 19, recalls
thinking. “Most girls don’t. Why don’t I help them out?”
Ms. Jessup wanted to make a video on self-defense techniques, and
her mother urged her to take a script-writing class at a community
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4. 1/18/12 Students who found new ways to give back. - NYTimes.com
college near their home in Vancouver, Wash. Ms. Jessup told the
professor of her plans, and within two months he helped her secure
scores of extras and $600,000 in cash and in-kind donations. The
film, “Just Yell Fire,” demonstrates fighting techniques like chokeholds
and gives tips from law enforcement officials.
The experience kicked off a career. While still in high school, Ms.
Jessup flew around the world speaking about self-defense and female
empowerment, and has testified before Congress. The video is
available at justyellfire.com as a free download. Organizations can sell
it with proceeds going back to her nonprofit organization; speaking
fees go toward her tuition at Vanderbilt University, where she is now a
sophomore.
Ms. Jessup says “Just Yell Fire” and her public speaking were a big
part of her college application and interview process. “I’d hear from
girls who got away from situations because of what I taught them, and
that’s so much more important to me than a 100 on a test,” she says.
“A 91 was fine.” She told the admissions staff: “Who are you going to
let in? Another 4.5 G.P.A. student or a young revolutionary who is
going to change the world?”
Ms. Jessup has curtailed her travel and pulled back from the day-to-
day running of the “Just Yell Fire” Web site to concentrate on school.
She is a communications studies major and wants to go into broadcast
journalism, something she saw first-hand while being interviewed
about “Just Yell Fire.”
“I think the media has such power,” Ms. Jessup says. “I’d love to be
involved in that and help shed light on solutions to social issues.” —
KATIE ZEZIMA
A Greener Way to Fish
IT began with a simple question: “Dad, what happens to all the lead
weights we use while fishing?”
Mike Browne, who had been fishing with his father for as long as he
could remember, didn’t give the matter much thought until it came
time to plan his Eagle Scout project. “I didn’t want to just clean up a
park,” he says. “Then, for whatever reason, I remembered that
question and how I’d never gotten an answer.”
Mr. Browne discovered that waterfowl and fish ingest the lead fishing
weights, which dissolve in their stomachs. Lead poisoning leads to
physical and behavioral changes that make these animals more
vulnerable to predators and unable to care for their young. He found a
Tufts University study that showed that a little more than half of adult
loon deaths are caused by lead poisoning. Mr. Browne decided
something needed to be done.
He sent letters of solicitation to more than 70 companies, including
Wal-Mart and fishing-weight manufacturers. With donations in hand,
he began compiling sample packs of lead-free weights and
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5. 1/18/12 Students who found new ways to give back. - NYTimes.com
information about his campaign, and handed them out at fishing
derbies around his home state of Massachusetts.
“It seemed wrong when there are plenty of other alternatives,” Mr.
Browne says. Fishermen can make their own weights with stones and
copper wire.
In 2007, Mr. Browne testified before a Massachusetts State Senate
subcommittee, and on Earth Day 2008, George W. Bush honored him
with the President’s Environmental Youth Award. Mr. Browne and his
Scout mates traveled to Sweden to represent the United States at a
United Nations youth environmental competition.
To date, he and his team have collected and recycled nearly 65 pounds
of lead, or 8,000 to 10,000 weights, and several states now ban or
limit the use of lead sinkers.
Edward Browne, Mike’s father, says he is amazed at how big his son’s
campaign became. “It’s phenomenal that Mike was able to find an
outlet like this,” he says. “It’s his from the ground up and gone on for
years.”
While the lead-free materials are still in demand, school is Mike
Browne’s priority. Now a 19-year-old freshman studying
electromechanical engineering at the Wentworth Institute of
Technology in Boston, he hopes to work at an aerospace company
someday.
The project, he says, has helped him become more organized and
taught him to speak in front of crowds of officials — no small
accomplishment for someone like Mr. Browne, who has Asperger’s
syndrome.
“People with Asperger’s become fixated with certain ideas,” Mr.
Browne explains. “It helped me with this project because it allowed me
to focus, to concentrate on one thing. I don’t want to be ‘cured’ of it —
it’s part of who I am.” — INYOUNG KANG
A version of this article appeared in print on January 9, 2011, on page
ED8 of Education Life.
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