Striving to Make a Difference in Darfur, the World

Simon and his fellow students also set their sights on the Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission, with a May 3 die-in, during which 200 students clad in white from Blair and 10 other high schools in Montgomery and Prince George's counties laid on a patch of artificial turf off Ellsworth Drive in downtown Silver Spring.

"We all in domino fashion collapsed on the ground and laid there for about 20 minutes," Simon said.

The group hoped to persuade the commission to adopt a policy that barred investing its pension fund in companies doing business in Sudan. The commission's employee retirement board is planning to divest the half percent of its $600 million investment portfolio with businesses that may be spending in Sudan, said Valerie Berton, a spokesman for the Planning Board.

Simon said he got involved in the Darfur issue "pretty much because I think everybody in Montgomery County is blessed enough to be in one of the most well-educated counties in America. We should all be helping out others who are in need."

At Richard Montgomery High School in Rockville, senior Ben Elkind has been working all year to "try to bring a discussion of race to the forefront in school." He succeeded in getting the topic to be one of the issues during Rocket Talk, regular sessions in which students meet for a discussion monitored by a facilitator.

As president of the Montgomery County Regional Student Government Association, Elkind also has been working with other students to draft plans to address school policies that may discriminate against students.

The students plan to meet this month with several community superintendents to talk about expanding the school system's study circle program to all high schools. The program helps "schools address the challenges posed by cultural and racial differences by bringing together parents, teachers, and students from different backgrounds," according to the school system's Web site.

"An honest and open dialogue about race is something that is much needed," Elkind said.

For Mira Fleming, a junior at Albert Einstein High School in Silver Spring, child marriage in countries such as Mali was an issue that she just couldn't ignore. A member of School Girls Unite, a local nonprofit group promoting education for girls worldwide, Fleming became alarmed when she learned this year about the physical and social harm that girls suffer when they are forced to marry at young ages.

"It kind of freaked me out," she said. "That millions of people experience this, kind of put me on edge."

So, with the help of fellow members of School Girls Unite at Einstein, Fleming created a video petition of Einstein students who are against child marriage. The students also collected 400 signatures from students at Einstein and A. Mario Loiederman Middle School. Some traveled to Capitol Hill to show the video to aides for some of the county's congressional representatives to garner support for the pending International Child Marriage Prevention and Assistance Act.

Einstein junior Georgia Handforth said she got involved when she offered to help edit the video petition and soon found herself lobbying Congress.

"Here we are, sitting around in school, saying 'Oh, we work so hard. I hate it,' " she said. "But there are people out there who just can't" get an education.