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e kids at St. Nicholas I Catholic school want to help out in whatever way they can, whether it's raising money to build a school in a tsunami-devastated area of Sri lanka or collecting their used Beanie Babies to send to the students there. This year, they've shifted their focus to a school in Barbados that has high instances of illiteracy among its 439 students. Instead of a library, Hillaby Turner's Hall primary school hasp little shelf containing tattered books for its students, aged three to I I, and their parents to use. But that's about to change thanks to St. Nicholas school's recent book drive, which collected about 5,000 books, along with monetary donations to cover ship- pingcosts. The 600 Waterloo students were each asked to bring in a used book and a loonie -r.- an amount they far surpassed. “This is an amazing communi- ty," said Fiona Dhanapala. who chaired the campaign. _ "The success" is Fatally a combi- nation of the children, parents and teachers." Gloria Lasovich, the school's vice-principal, agrees, saying the teachers really got behind the drive? "lt's not a" tBugh sell when it's something like this." St. Nicholas began its annual tradition of reaching out to the world in 2005, when the school community wanted to do some- thing to help the people living in the tsunami-affected areas in Asia. Dhanapala, whose three chil- ver the past three decades, Oiii Gates has helped com- puter technology become integral to life in theWestem world. The co-founder of Microsoft helped bring innovative software to the market and his work has allowed computers to make the jump from corporate number crunchers to personal tools. Now that retirement is creeping up, Gates wants to bring technolo- gy to the poorer regions of the world to help cure diseases, improve farming and medical tech- niques and give the world's poorest Microsoft founder advances the need for human connections Local school stacks the shelves for kids overseas By lawman Omsmm Chronicle My]: - BYGREGMAcDoNAu, inigleét-i Transform Your Space with. idk It's a great time to bring a fresh new look to your home! Para Paints offers a beautiful colour palette aM superior quality products. Heer’s Decorating can provide you with the expertise and great advice! Drop intoday for a fresh new look tot your home! dren attend St. Nicholas school, is from Sri Lanka, so she helped the school spearhead a Beanie Baby drive to help the children there. Fiona Dhanapala helped organize a book drive at St. Nicholas Catholic school that raised 5,000 books for a needy school in Barbados. "The idea behind it was to get pictures of the kids collecting these Beanie Babies and also pictures from Sri Lanka once those kids Speaking at the University of Waterloo last week, Gates told about 700 high-school and univer- sity students that the key to advancement in the next decades will be not only technological understanding but cultural knowl- edgeaswd. people arbetter cl1anctt? surv.ive. It was the second time in two years that Gates visited the univer- sity, which has traditionally been one of Microsoft's top feeder schools. "tUniversity of Waterloo) is a special place," Gates said. "The uni- versity is doing great_work. "is a souere of great people who come to work at Microsoft CITY NEWS have received them so our kids could see, visually, what they had done," she said. The success of that toy drive led the Waterloo school to adopt a school in Sri lanka for two years, during which time the students held penny drives. who go on to do good work." Gates recently donated $12.5- million to the university for science and math education. He will retire from his post at Microsoft in Iuly to work full time with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Gates said he wants to reach out to the poorest two-billion citizens in the world and use technology like cellphones and the Internet to help give those people a voice. Lihe way rharkets work right now is if you have no money, you have no voice," Gates said. Society needs to fundamentally change its values and priorities to make sure the.market warrants finding cures for diseases like b/y/wi/ 'si"., li), PARA Enough money was collected to keep that school up and running for several yHrs. - "This is like a pioneer-type of classroom setting where all they had was a blackboard and some chairs, nothing else," Dhanapala malaria, which affect only the poor- est popqlations. _ "Right now we spend more annually on curing baldness than we do on malaria because that's what the market says," he said. Malaria kills one-million people per year, but superficial problems trump malaria research because they are concerns of the first world. "Something can be done. We have to go out and study groups and learn ways to fix these prob- lems," Gates said. “We need enlightened value sys- tems" Those words rang true with UW nanotechnology student Rajesh Swaminathan. [WWW H070 WM EKLOO CHRONICIE . My. Railway 27, zone- 3 They've equipped the classroom with supplies and the children with uniforms. an outdoor playground and a teacher, whose monthly salary is $35. "Having set the schoolhouse completely on its feet, we thought wouldnt it be nice now to reach out to another part of the world," she said. Coincidentally, a parent in the school community was living in Barbados in the past, and she was able to rind a public school there thameeds books. "That's when we thought, why dont we turn it around this year and do a book drive instead," Dhanapala said. The drive not only brought ie more books than expected, but the financial contributions also exceeded the planning committee's goals. The extra funds will be sent to Hillaby Turner's Hall primary school to cover the costs of build- ing a shelving unit to store the books. Dhanapala recently did a pres- entation at St. Nicholas so the kids could see the school they would be helping. And it's that visual c0nnec- tion that makes the difference for the local students, lasavich said. "It gives the kids an appreciation of what they do 11ave_hese." -- A These ahnual efforts - called the one-by-one program - teach students they can have all impact. "The idea is that one by one, we can make a difference," Dhanapala said. "So whatever the child brought in, whether it was just one little book to a dollar or $20 bill, didnt matter because at the end of the day they can see that little bit makes a difference." "The idea of a social entrepre- neur will be important in years to come. If there's someone who can push that idea, it's (Gates)." "What he says is true, we are very capable of making many Peo- ple's lives better," Swaminathan . Gates also enticed the audience with visions of the next decade in technokogy. A -- _ - .. The world's richest man said that the next big advancement will be natural user interfaces - speech and touch commands on devices integrated into everyday life. "mese will be a Saéen on every wall projecting different informa- tion," Gates said. '