Har-Ber Program Wins Award

— Har-Ber High School won the Founder’s Award at the Environmental and Spatial Technology Initiative’s national conference in Hot Springs this week.

It was the second time in four years Har-Ber has won the award, which honors the program that “best demonstrates the overall purpose and mission of the EAST initiative,” according to the initiative’s website.

Har-Ber also won the award in 2010. The school was a finalist in 2009 and 2012.

The initiative is an educational program in which students take on community service projects using sophisticated technology. It started with a single classroom program in Greenbrier in 1996. It has since spread to 220 schools in six states.

Debra Lamb, Har-Ber’s program facilitator, said her 70 students enjoyed great support from their school and the community in the projects they did. Much of their work over the past year focused on veterans. That included documenting an “Honor Flight” of local World War II veterans to Washington, to see the World War II Memorial.

“All their projects became more than just doing a project,” Lamb said Friday, while on the bus coming home from Hot Springs. “It became about making a difference in the world around them.”

Finalists competed for the Founder’s Award during the national conference this week in Hot Springs by presenting the projects they have worked on for the past year to a small group of judges.

Ten Har-Ber students attended the convention. Two students participated in the presentation to judges. The Founder’s Award winner was announced Thursday night.

Har-Ber won a trophy, a computer, an iPad Mini, an Apple TV and a Yeti, which is a high-tech microphone.

Har-Ber was one of five Founder’s Award finalists — all from Arkansas — chosen last month. Springdale’s Sonora Elementary School also was a finalist, becoming the first elementary school to achieve such a distinction. The other finalists included Dardanelle High School, Greenbrier High School and Harrisburg Middle School.

One group of Har-Ber program students recently received a $2,000 grant from State Farm to support the production of a documentary on the dangers of texting and driving. The students plan to show the video in district schools and sponsor a Driving Safety Fair this spring.

Also in the past year, Har-Ber’s program initiated “Watts for Wildcats,” where students went into Springdale schools and gave talks on energy efficiency.

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