Leadership students working to stop Sudan atrocities

In the sleepy community of Incline Village, it is often hard to imagine the strife that people endure across the globe every day. Not only have Incline High School students thought about what has happened in one African country, they've done something about it.

In the last month, the leadership class taught by Aaron Parsons has raised more than $1,000 to help people in Darfur, a region of western Sudan where the government has displaced and murdered hundreds of thousands of people.

"The whole thing sparked in my history class last year. We had to pick a current event for our final projects and one of them was what is happening in Sudan," said senior Brook Bentley, student body vice president at Incline High. Bentley came up with the idea of raising money for Darfur after she saw a Web site that mentioned a national high school fund-raiser, Dollars for Darfur.

Teachers Milton Hyams and Whitney Foehl had also heard about the program and gave Bentley and the rest of the leadership class more information about it.

Bentley signed Incline High School up for the national fund-raiser on the Save Darfur Web site and leadership students started an e-mail campaign, sending out links to the school's page where people can donate.

"They sent out e-mails to their friends and family, anyone they thought would want to contribute," Parsons said.

"A lot of schools did really well with it, one school in Wyoming raised like $12,000 - they must have really been doing serious fund-raising," Bentley said. "This week, we had a lot of people donate - we've almost doubled what we raised in the last three weeks."

Incline students have almost reached their goal of $1,500, but they only have one day left.

"Something in my heart tells me that we should reach out to these people - especially in this community, there are people who can help," Bentley said. "I feel for the people over there - you look at the pictures and read books about it, it's just heartbreaking to hear about what's happening."

If you would like to donate, visit IHS's fund-raising page at www.savedarfur.org/page/outreach/view/dollarsfordarfur/InclineHigh.