Albany High Students Want Your Old Cell Phones – to Build a School in Nicaragua

Anyone prone to misgivings about today’s teenagers might take heart from the buildOn Club at Albany High School.

The group – an independent chapter of the national buildOn organization – is distinguished in part by its extraordinary fundraising commitment in the service of building a school for children who need one in Nicaragua.

The organization of 30-40 students hopes to follow in the successful footsteps of their previous project – in which they raised $37,000 to build a school in Nepal.

It took two years of weekend bake sales and other fundraising activities to gather enough for the Nepal school, said Legeng Liu, a junior who heads up the school’s fundraising efforts.

The projects also include travel to the country where the school is built. The school itself costs about $30,000 to build, and an additional $20,000 was needed for the 14 students who decided to make the trip last April to Nepal, Liu said. Part of the travel money, $7,000, came from the group’s fundraising, and the rest of the travel expenses were paid by the students’ families, he said.

Collection drive for used electronics

In addition to their ongoing weekend bake sale next to the Apple store on Fourth Street in Berkeley, the club is now holding a collection drive for used electronics, such as iPods, tablets, laptops, etc. The drive ends Dec. 6. Electronics can be dropped off in donation boxes at the high school, Albany Library and Albany YMCA.

This is their first year for the electronics drive, Liu said. They decided on the strategy after learning about it in a summer buildOn workshop, he said. The club will turn over the electronics to Gizmogul, a Boston-based recycling company, which will give 75 percent of the profit to the club, Liu said.

A fundraiser in January included selling fair-trade, organic coffee grown by Nicaraguan farmers from villages where buildOn has built schools, Liu said. Some of the sales were done by members going door to door, he said.

Their two main sources of income are the bake sales and online donations. The bake sales have raised more than $4,000 so far this year, and the online donations campaign, which has only just started this year, raised $15,000 for the Nepal school.

The bake sales take place Saturday and Sunday from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. and feature a range of items that club members make on Friday nights, Liu said. These can include such items as chocolate chip cookies, cupcakes, scones, lemon bars, snickerdoodles and Mexican wedding cake, he said.

One unusual feature of the baked goods is that there is no price.

“We don’t set prices on the baked goods,” Liu said. “Some people will give a quarter and take something, but that is balanced out by some who will give $20 and take one cookie or take nothing at all.”

The school site in Nicaragua hasn’t been chosen yet, he said. The buildOn rules require that half the money be raised before a site is selected, a process that involves partnering with a local village that wants a school, according to Liu.

The village must provide the manual labor to build the school, and at least 50 percent of the students must be girls, he said.

What motivates the students to make such a commitment?

Liu said Albany High students enjoy access to an excellent education that is not available in students in many parts of the world.

“A lot of our members are grateful for the education they receive, and they want to bring it to other people,” he said.

Those who wish to donate to the group's efforts can do so on the online donation website.

Related article:

• Congratulations to AHS BuildOn students - TOP fundraisers in the U.S.!!

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