Last year, we shared the story of a young woman in a Catholic high school who was experiencing ongoing harassment. She shared her own story and that of a fellow student in one of our newsletters.

After repeated attempts to talk to her school counselor about the abuse and abusive language she was enduring, she contacted HeartStrong after an educational forum in her town. Aside from personal support, HeartStrong then provided her with information to present to her counselor at her Catholic high school. HeartStrong also sent letters to administrators as well as the counselor.

A few days ago, the student received her student handbook for the 2007-2008 school year. To her surprise she found the following policies published in the book.

"____________ Catholic High School students will not .....verbalize slurs or remarks concerning gender, race, ethnicity, religion, age, disability, or sexual orientation."

Also in the handbook is a written policy by one of the teachers for her own classroom.

"...discriminatory or inflammatory behavior will not be tolerated. These include sexist, racist, and homophobic comments."

Obviously, the new school policy for students is not the absolute best in its wording, but it is a gigantic step for this school. Most importantly, this young woman has seen the results of her personal empowerment to stand up to faith-based bullying at her school.

HeartStrong is not revealing the name of the school because the last time that there was major progress at a Catholic school like this there was a lot of (nonHeartStrong) media attention and within a month the progress was rescinded by an archbishop.

This is a very rare example of what can happen when a courageous student does the right thing.

Many exciting things are happening on this trip. We have extended the first portion of this trip in northern California after students at several schools requested visits. So we are still near San Francisco working hard to get as much accomplished in a short time as possible. The latest stats from the CA Department of Education show that San Francisco County is still the county with the most religious schools in the country and the highest enrollments in the state.

We will be leaving soon to do more work in southern California and Nevada. We still need your financial help! We are $8,000.00 short on the funds needed for this trip which extends until December 18, 2007.

Starting the first week in September, Sky and Tina will be hammering and sawing and measuring and sheathing and decking and Tyvecking and toenailing --- and eating Shipley donuts and sweating a lot! We wouldn't miss it for anything. It's hard work and more fun than a month of Sundays!!

Don't want to be left out? There's lots of different volunteer jobs. There are opportunities on the construction site, in the office and in the ReSTORE. You can even prepare and serve lunch to our Saturday construction volunteers.

If you are curious about what you could do to be part of this Habitat project, just contact:

                         Longview Habitat

903--236-0900

Tina:                    trushing@kilgore.edu

903--758-0266

Sky:                      skysong@etex.net

                                903--797-4325