Students take on world’s challenges

For high schoolers, 20 years might as well be a lifetime. But hand them a problem that experts say threatens the entire planet if not solved in the next two decades, and they’ll simply get to work. Perhaps the most hopeful sign for the rest of us: They’ll have fun while they’re at it.

A prime example was an ebullient group of teenage girls, a whirl of blue jeans and saris amid hundreds of teachers and students gathered for a conference recently in Boston. During the school year, they’ve exchanged roughly 1,500 e-mails between Mount Saint Joseph Academy near Philadelphia and St. Joseph’s Convent School in Jabalpur, India. They’ve even had a few videoconferences in their quest to get to know each other and to hash out some practical means to chip away at global infectious diseases.

That’s the topic they selected as participants in a new initiative called Challenge 20/20. Organized by the National Association of Independent Schools (NAIS) in Washington, D.C., it engages students as young as pre-K in finding local ways to address 20 urgent issues – after they’ve thought about them first on a global level.

By Stacy A. Teicher | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

Full Story: http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0322/p16s01-legn.html?s=hns