Salisbury J8 Team Makes Top 10 Cut in the U.S.
Salisbury High School may be a small 500 student school located in the heart of the Lehigh Valley, but what we produce are motivated, intelligent, remarkably worldly students. Four of these such students formed a team called GUIDE (Globally Unified Individuals for Development and Ecology) and submitted an extremely well crafted and innovative application to the UNICEF sponsored Junior 8 (J8) competition. The team consisted of senior Melinda Lehman, juniors Brandon Aversano, Fatema Rajmohamed, and Olga Karounos and their conversations and deliberations over the course of the last month centered around Environmental Issues, HIV/AIDS, and Literacy Promotion. The team collaborated on not only the issues, but proposed potential solutions. GUIDE encompassed some of the best and brightest among Salisbury High School students and evolved from the students’ passion for global issues through their ethnic and cultural diversity and their involvement in extracurricular service and academic activities. Approximately two years ago Melinda returned to the United States after spending the past 12 years living in Tanzania where she became fluent in Swahili. Fatema is American born to Uganda and Kenyan parents, is Muslim in faith, and speaks fluent Gujrati. Brandon and Olga seem like the average all-American kids, but they do, in fact, bring a ethnic diversity to the table in their respective Jewish and Greek cultures as well. Both Brandon and Olga are also members of our award-winning Model United Nations team. Overall, this team was hard to beat, but alas an all International Baccalaureate team from North Miami, Florida beat them. Nonetheless, our remarkable team, from our little high school, managed to astound us all with a top 10 finish in the J8 competition. Teams from all over the United States compete to earn one spot to the G8 Summit in Sardinia, Italy, the competition is fierce, and our team could not have made us prouder in their efforts, their care for global issues, their drive to make a difference, and their abilities to write effectively, think collectively, and create an amazing product in the end. Congratulations GUIDE – you have made the entire Salisbury High School community very proud!
