World AIDS Day event is a huge success

In Corvallis, Oregon a group of Global Citizen Corps students involved with their high school’s Human Rights Club had an idea to plan a dance in honor of World AIDS Day. They titled their dance the “Red Rave”, encouraging students to wear red to the event, and decided to send all the proceeds to Cascade AIDS Project (CAP), a local HIV/AIDS support and service organization.

Due to the school’s dance schedule, winter break, lack of support and a last minute location cancellation, the dance had to be postponed until January 30th. Despite all these complications, the group was still able to create an event that had a huge turnout of about 300 students from 2 high schools, raised $1,450 for CAP, and was a lot of fun. Not only did they raise money for CAP, but they gave students the opportunity to donate 1$ to support Mercy Corps’ Haiti efforts when they bought their tickets, raising a total of 150$ for Mercy Corps.

Liza, a GCC Leader, described the event:

“Everyone wore red to raise awareness about AIDS, and people got really into that and dressed really wildly. It was just a really great party, and no one wanted it to end. When we were cleaning up, the building employee told us that we would most likely be refunded the money it cost to rent the hall at the last minute ($350), since we were working for such a good cause!”

The group is now planning events for World Water Day on March 22nd, including ideas for a film viewing and garage sale.

Apply Now for the 2010-2011 Global Citizen Corps Leadership Program!

The 2010-2011 Global Citizen Corps Leadership Application is now available online!

To apply, visit this website: http://www.globalcitizencorps.org/leadership/apply

The year-long Global Citizen Corps Leadership program works with 500 international youth leaders. Students work together to spread the word about root causes of critical global issues by mobilizing others to make a difference. Over one year, leaders work with Mercy Corps to get the training, knowledge, resources and tools to raise awareness and organize effective local actions that make a global impact.


Leaders will gain skills in four areas: Action Planning, Leadership Development, Multi-Media and Global Issues. With this training, students will have the knowledge and skills to organize powerful actions that address the problems such as global health, hunger, climate change and lack of access to education.



Application deadline is April 30th 2010. This application is available for US Leaders only.

Help For Haiti: A Portland student's fundraising effort

Action +Awareness = Impact. That's what Global Citizen Corps is all about, and students who participate in the Leadership program prove this framework is possible.

Dina is a junior at Lincoln High School in Portland, Oregon and a Global Citizen Corps Leader. She was quick to act when she found out about the devastation in Haiti after the earthquake on Tuesday January 12th. On Thursday, two days after the quake, Dina called an emergency meeting with fellow students at school to brainstorm ideas on how to help. They quickly came up with a simple fundraising idea – there was an open slot in the upcoming spirit assembly on Friday, a perfect place to ask the rest of the students for help as well.

Dina spoke to her 1,400 fellow high school students at the assembly, asking them each to donate one dollar to Mercy Corps to support relief efforts in Haiti. She explained how $1 might not seem like much, but if every student donated, it would be huge. To collect funds, students held boxes that said "Help for Haiti" at the assembly and at the doorways to the gymnasium after her speech. Students began carrying these boxes with them to their classrooms, and they set up a donation table at lunch time. On the first day, they were able to collect $325.. The next week they used the same routine of classroom collections and coined their lunchtime donation site "Lunch Change for Haiti".

One week after their initial announcement at the assembly, almost every student had donated a dollar – they raised $1,115 by using the equation Action + Awareness = Impact.

Dina is still working on collecting funds for Haiti and is planning an awareness project for World Water Day on March 22nd. Her fundraising work for Haiti caught national attention, and she is featured in a New York Times article about the success of small group fundraising. Check the article out here: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/11/us/11charity.html.

Thank you Dina for making such a positive impact!