LOCK HAVEN - Corey Aungst is back in town, but he can't stay for long.
The public is invited to join him and four innovative local educators at Avenue 209 for Haitian Culture Night tomorrow, starting at 6 p.m. Haitian food as well as coffee - from Aungst's personal store - will be available at the fundraiser for Virtual Classroom, Aungst's latest project to help poverty-stricken regions of the world.
A dedicated volunteer, Aungst has recently been named missions logistics director for the employee-created volunteer organization Airline Ambassadors International. His new responsibilities will take him to all 19 of AAI's project sites over the coming months.
A big piece of his heart remains in Haiti, though, where he got his start working for others overseas.
He'll soon start something else there - his new project, Virtual Classrooms.
And he got that off the ground where his love for other cultures took root, right here in the Keystone Central School District.
Aungst approached his former teacher Maryann Winkelman, who instructs French, Spanish and cultures at Central Mountain Middle School, with his idea of using the Internet to link local classrooms with All of God's Children Orphanage in Mirebalais, Haiti.
She and three other educators are now on board with the school district administration's blessing, including Dave Williams, middle school science teacher; Suzanne Hanna, high school biology teacher; and Blake Bergey, technical coordinator for the school district.
"These are the kinds of students we produce at Central Mountain," Winkelman said of Aungst with a touch of pride in her voice for a former student who has done well.
She can take some personal pride in the project too, since Aungst gives her the credit for sparking his interest in seeing the world.
He participated in school trips to Mexico and Europe with Winkelman and this led him to become a flight attendant with United Airlines, which opened the door for him to Airline Ambassadors. The organization gave him a way to quickly respond to the earthquake aftermath in Haiti, and in particular, to the needs of All of God's Children Orphanage which his church, Blanchard Church of Christ, has targeted for mission.
The orphanage is now an official AAI project, Aungst reported.
He took a second volunteer trip there about a month ago. On his first trip, not long after the quakes, he and other AAI volunteers built a clinic, he said.
"This time, we built furniture for it, including exam beds," Aungst reported. "It was a fully functional clinic by the time we left. We also installed water filtration systems... We were actually drinking water right out of the tap."
A WNEP news team accompanied AAI on this recent trip and was to begin airing a series about it yesterday, Aungst said. A 30-minute documentary is planned to air on May 13.
It was his work at the orphanage that started him thinking about how to link up classrooms, he said.
"One of the kids, Carlos, 17, lost his family and everything in the earthquake, and he relocated himself to the orphanage. We got talking, and he said he had nothing to look forward to, no further schooling or education he could take," Aungst said. "I was kind of spooling this over in my mind and I thought, 'Why couldn't they go to school over the Internet?""
With the power of AAI, the abilities of the Keystone Central educators and the generosity of this region, Aungst hopes to make that happen.
After that, he believes other American school districts will want in on it, and he's already targeted AAI's mission site in Chile as the second place to receive the benefits of Virtual Classroom.
His ultimate goal is to set up Virtual Classroom at all AAI sites.
This first project will be the pilot, and the first four educators are ready to go to Haiti on June 28 to meet the people and establish ground rules. They hope to be able to take 40 lap tops with them, enough for 500 Haitian kids and youth to use.
Bergey will set up the system at both ends, linking the classrooms through satellite Internet, Webcam and Skype.
The teachers will return in August, with the goal of having virtual students from Haiti attending their classes in real time when schools start in September.
The cost of the equipment and set-up is $15,000, and the teachers, who are all unpaid volunteers for this project, have started asking for donations from the community.
"It's not for us, it's to put into the computers," Winkelman said.
"It's for our kids, too," she added.
She's already helped her students build a Haiti connection through Aungst. Her Cultures Club recently collected hundreds of items which he delivered on his second trip to the orphanage.
Another collection, this time focusing on school supplies, has already started at the school.
"My sixth-graders are writing letters - in French which I'll take down," Winkelman said. "Hopefully, I'll have letters to bring back, and once the program starts, the students will be e-mailing back and forth."
The teacher already has a long-term plan to research and set up an English as a Second Language program for the site in Mirebalais.
The short-term goal is to raise enough money to connect the classrooms and to give the teachers a chance to spend time with the Haitians.
"Once we get it set up it will go easy," Aungst said.
He and three of the educators shared coffee and strategies at Avenue 209 recently, where Tuesday's fundraiser will take place. They talked about what they would pack, the logistics of hand-delivering donated items, and the fact that the concept of time is vastly different in Haitian culture.
("They're not used to Americans coming and saying, 'We're going to do this, this and this!" Aungst joked.)
Winkelman said she could relate. She participated in a mission trip to the Dominican Republic through the Cogan Station Church of Christ and, like Aungst, was struck by the plight of the children there.
"You can't sum it up until you go there and do it," she said. "It's possibly the most rewarding thing I've ever done, other than teaching and raising my children."
She didn't hesitate to sign up for Virtual Classroom when Aungst presented it to her, and she became the contact for other interested educators.
Williams, who teaches right across the hall from her, was taken by the idea, and Hanna got on board by responding to a link on the Keystone Central Web site, a link that took her to Winkelman.
Williams thanked Aungst for the opportunity to teach outside the box of the classroom.
"Without Airline Ambassadors and Corey, it never would have come about," he said.
Winkelman said she is excited to be able to do some long-term good at a mission site, and Williams is looking forward to seeing his local students interact with students in a foreign land for an entire school year.
In the next six months, while the Keystone Central educators meet new Haitian friends and start up Virtual Classroom, Aungst will be in the air, not just for work but also visiting Chile, Cambodia, Ethiopia, India, Peru and Thailand for Airline Ambassadors.
His volunteer work is taking him away from his local jobs somewhat, he said. A paramedic with Goodwill Ambulance Co. in Flemington and a certified EMT, he also is a part-time paramedic at Evangelical Hospital in Lewisburg.
Airline Ambassadors was looking for medical volunteers when it tapped him to go to Haiti the first time.
Since then, he has not only done a lot of good on the ground in other countries but also has served as a conduit for donations from this region.
Now, his Virtual Classroom project is poised to enrich the lives of not only 500 young Haitians but also local students who will have Virtual classmates this fall and will be a part of what Aungst calls "the culture experience of a lifetime."
Aungst said none of this is about him. It's just that he is happy to link up people who want to help with solid opportunities to do so.
"We have a lot of people who say, 'We want to do this thing, but we have no idea how,'" he said. "It's really about connections."
So far the response has been gratifying, he said.
"It's awesome," he said. "That's the only word for it."
