Watching Oprah on television is a regular pastime 17-year-old Brittney Christopher shares with her mother. One episode of the show announced the O Ambassadors program, which Oprah started to inspire young people to become active in the global society.
One thousand schools in the United States and Canada are chosen to be O Ambassadors, and Christopher was recently informed that Middletown High School would be one of those schools for the 2008-2009 school year thanks to her. MHS teacher Gina Zanella will support Christopher with the project.
“I didn’t think about opening a chapter at our school until our senior project assembly at the end of my junior year,” Christopher said. “This is the first year you can do a community service project as your senior project.”
She said she wanted to participate in the O Ambassadors program, but didn’t think she would have the time to do that and her project. When she found out she could combine the two, she decided to apply.
“Being able to do it as my senior project is a really good thing,” Christopher said. “Making a global change is huge.”
MHS Principal Donna Mitchell said she started filling out the application for the O Ambassador program a few months before the senior project assembly, but put it on hold because she realized it was supposed to be student-run. When Christopher approached her about the project, she thought it was the perfect match.
“The whole idea of adding the community service component to the senior project is to teach our students to do things because it’s the right thing to do,” Mitchell said. “Brittney’s a great, great student and she’s really going to take this and run with it. She has a lot of great ideas.”
According to the O Ambassador Web site, the program connects its school chapters in North America with people around the world to create lasting change by working toward the UN Millennium Development Goals.
The goals are situated in four categories – poverty, education, health and sustainable development.
The poverty goals are to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger, and reduce child mortality. Education goals are to achieve universal primary education, and promote gender equality and empower women. Health goals are to improve maternal health and combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases. Sustainable development goals are to ensure environmental sustainability and develop a global partnership for development.
“All of the issues are important, but the education is really important to me because you can hold so many people down if they’re not educated and unaware of what’s going on in the world,” Christopher said. “Education empowers people and those around them.”
O Ambassadors focuses on helping people in five key areas – West Africa, East Africa, South Asia, East Asia and Latin America.
Christopher said she doesn’t yet know which region will be the focus of the MHS chapter.
To contribute to the goals, each chapter must raise funds for their chosen region.
“It’s a specific fundraising and awareness activity that educates people here and people in the region we’re assigned,” Christopher said. “I know a lot of the money goes to build schools in the assigned regions. On the [Oprah] show, some of the students went to Africa and actually built schools and homes for undereducated people in poverty-stricken areas.”
She said she’d love to have that chance in the future.
As treasurer of the MHS Class of 2009, Christopher has experience raising funds and handling money, which will help her with the project.
“I want to make it a community effort rather than just the high school,” she said. “Our community really comes together in times of need when they know they can help other people.”
Christopher said she’d like to organize a 5K fundraiser and get businesses to donate to the program. In return, she’ll have T-shirts made for participants that include each business on the back.
She said she also wants to hold a competition between the elementary schools and award the winning school with a field day or movie day. A fundraising competition is just one idea, but she hasn’t settled on what to do yet.
Christopher said she researched the other O Ambassador schools online and saw the highest fundraising goal was set at $30,000.
It is a lot, but I feel like we could do that here as well,” she said. “I think I’m going to set the goal around $20,000 to $25,000.”
Christopher said she’s waiting on all of the requirements for the program to come through, and until then she’s brainstorming ways to recruit members for the chapter.
“Mrs. Mitchell and I are going to do that together to find people who really care about the cause,” she said.
Mitchell said she hopes the program is something students at MHS continue each year.
“I want a group of students each year who are more than willing to take over and just keep rolling with it so it becomes a part of Middletown and Cavalier Country,” she said. “I hope it becomes something we do [every year] to reach out to other people and the rest of the world.”
For more information, go to www.oambassadors.org.
Middletown, Del. —
