by Georgia Dunn
JEA mentor (Ohio)

Adviser Beth Bloom of Amelia High School’s Baron Beat points out details on the Nikon camera to photographer Alex Robb, a junior. They received the camera as the result of a project posted to donorschoose.org. Photo by Wayne Dunn.

Ohio JEA mentee Beth Bloom and her students from Amelia High School in the West Clermont School District near Cincinnati are the proud owners of a new Nikon camera – and it was donated to them.

Bloom and her students put together a project for the website donorschoose.org. According to the DonorsChoose website, public school teachers from all parts of the United States post classroom project requests. Then visitors to the website can browse all of the requests or particular types of projects in which they are interested. Visitors can then choose to donate to fund particular projects.

“We tried last year, but our project wasn’t funded,” Bloom said. “We decided to try again, and this time the funding worked!”

Bloom began the journalism program at Amelia two years ago as part of their “small schools” initiative that a grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation supported.

The camera will enable the student journalists to cover school events from classroom to the theater to the sports fields.

The DonorsChoose website will certainly help to improve Amelia’s Baron Beat newspaper.