1995
ITS concept
1998
National Geographic drives
US-China telemedicine link (Stanford's official site)
The Seattle Times
Brownie squad's goal was only 5,000 at first
By Justino ÁguilaSeattle Times Eastside bureau
Click here to see full color photo (496 K)
Never underestimate Girl Power!
When eight Girl Scout Brownies set out to collect 5,000 National Geographic magazines and books as a community service project, no one anticipated the outcome.
After one month of gathering magazines destined to end up in Beijing, St. Louise Brownie Troop 1060 in Bellevue has taken in a whopping 30,000 donated periodicals thanks to a simple, but effective, campaign of word-of-mouth publicity, radio spots, and newspaper ads.
"It was hard work," said Laura Kent, 9. "It was also fun because I know people in another part of the world are going to get the magazines and learn more."
"At first we didn't even think we'd get 5,000," said Katherine Bernard, 8. "But we did."
Earlier this year, the troop got the idea for the collection after reading in National Geographic about Bridge to Asia, a program that distributes educational materials such as copoes of the magaizne to Third World countires.
"The demand for material in English is high in China," said Jeff Smith, president of the nonprofit San Francisco-based group that is covering the cost of shipping the magainzes. "What the girls have done is completely off the charts and is so exciting for us."
The frist-, second- and third-graders surpassed even students and faculty at Cornell University, who two years ago collected 10,000 magazines and books.
"no one could have predicted that the Brownies could have turned up the most response in the 11 years we've been doing this," Smith said.
Smith figures that people who collect National Geographic magazines are loath to throw them out, but eager and pleased to put them to better use.
The donations have been stashed at troop member Kelsey Moore's house. A gree, 20-foot shipping container plopped in the driveway will be filled this weekend, and the magazines will be shipped to China early this week.
"I didn't think people would give up their National Geographics so easilty because they've been holding on to them for years," said Mar Keng, the troop's leader. "We know by the second weekend into the project that we were getting to many calls, and there's only so much girl power to go around."
One of the calls came from a National Geographic photographer, who last week came for a photo shoot of the Browniesthat lasted nearly three hours.
"It was kind of boring," Kent said. "we had to sit there and not move for a long time."