October 2005
Contact: Dorothy Wills-Raftery
(845) 255-1400 xt. 1209

We’ve Got Your Back: Career and Technical Center Students Reaching Out to Katrina Victims

Students at the Ulster BOCES Career & Technical Center are doing their part in a nationwide campaign to help survivors of Hurricane Katrina. Dubbed, “We’ve Got Your Back,” the project is sponsored by Do Something, a nonprofit organization that inspires, supports, and celebrates young people changing their world. The organization has asked students across the country to fill backpacks with school supplies for the thousands of children affected by Katrina.

“The project gives Ulster BOCES students a direct and immediate way to show children affected by Katrina that they care,” says Howard Korn, director of the Career & Technical Center.

Coordinated by the Career & Tech Center’s SkillsUSA chapter, Ulster BOCES students are stuffing 60 backpacks, generously donated by Anaconda Sports in Kingston, with new school supplies such as pens, pencils, crayons, and notebooks, as well as personal items like toothbrushes and toothpaste. SkillsUSA members will send the stuffed backpacks to Hogg Middle School in Houston, Texas, where they will be distributed to students in the hurricane-stricken areas.

SkillsUSA is a national organization serving more than a quarter-million high school and college students and professional members who are enrolled in technical, skilled, service, and health occupations. The program provides quality educational experiences for s¬tudents in leadership, teamwork, citizenship, and character development. It emphasizes total quality at work, high ethical standards, superior work skills, life-long education, and pride in the dignity of work.

For more information about SkillsUSA and the “We’ve Got Your Back” campaign, please contact Kerri Sheehy at 845-331-6680.