The John F. Kennedy Presidential Library awarded “JFK Make a Difference Awards” to 30 active members of Quincy's Broad Meadows Middle School’s volunteer, after school activism club known as Operation: Day's Work-USA or ODW for short.

Students in 20 communities were recognized for service learning projects. Sixty-seven individual awards were presented but 30 awards went to the Quincy Broad Meadows Middle School students. Kumu Gupta, Advisory Board Asian American Commission of  MA & Vice Chair Quincy Human Rights Commission was on hand to congratulate the students of Broad Meadows for setting a high standard in helping under privileged children around the world. Jane Lindsay, Coordinator of  the Make A Difference Awards at JFK Library and Museum told Miss Gupta - " We would like to see more schools be recognized next year, for the wonderful work that their students do through their after school programs". The Operations Days Work students were special invited guests at Quincy Human Rights Commission's 60th Anniversary celebrations of the Declaration of Human Rights in December last year.

 Changing the world a little annually is all in a day’s work for Quincy middle school students in Quincy. This is the tenth anniversary of Operation Day’s Work whose motto is “Kids helping global kids to help themselves.” Along with six other schools nationally, Broad Meadows students co-founded ODW ten years ago. Thousands of children’s lives on four continents have been changed for the better as a result.  There are ten schools nationally with an ODW chapter. Most are in New England.

 Broad Meadows Middle School and Ron Adams are 1 of the original 6 schools who founded the ODW program at USAID (US Agency for International Development) in Washington DC, 10 years ago. Roots of Broad Meadow students role with ODW go back to 1994 when they helped Iqbal , who was sold into child labor in Pakistan.In 1994, students from Broad Meadows Middle School met Iqbal Masih, a 12-year-old Pakistani activist who had been sold into bonded labor at age 4 and escaped at age 10. December 2, 1994, Iqbal visited the Broad Meadows Middle School in Quincy, Massachusetts. He looked much younger than his twelve years: his growth had been stunted by severe malnutrition and years of cramped immobility in front of a loom. The pupils at the school were greatly moved by the plight of children forced into slavery. - On Easter Sunday, 1995, Iqbal was murdered.These Broad Meadows students went on to co found Operations Days Work program with USAID in 1998, which was kicked off in the US in 1999.

For details on  Iqbal's story please visit :

 http://www.studentxpress.ie/features/slavery.html  under Iqbal's Dream.

Each year, the ODW members nationally vote on a cause in a developing country and a partner in that country. The partner designs a meaningful, sustainable education or health care project essential to kids’ health and effective in preventing those children from becoming child laborers. The ODW members raise funds to make the design come true. Project designs have become: school programs and/or school buildings in Ethiopia, Nepal, Bangladesh, Rwanda and Vietnam; orphanages in Ethiopia and El Salvador; a community health center in Burundi.

This year’s ODW project is to partner with Partners in Health to restore schools in hurricane ravaged Haiti making it possible for 2,000 children to return to school FREE and to provide FREE health care to their families.

It’s amazing what youth can do in a day’s work.

 In recognition of ten years of ODW humanitarian aid projects, on March 1, 2009, the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library bestowed a JFK Library Make a Difference Award to each of the 30 students members of ODW. The awards were presented on March 1, because March 1 is the day that John F. Kennedy launched The Peace Corps and is the 1st of its kind to be awarded each year here after.

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