On Tuesday, November 15th, 2016, the Global Initiative Committee (GIC), a joint project by the AYLUS North Shore and East Nassau branches, took their class time out of school for a field trip to The Reece School in New York City. The Reece School is a non-profit special education school founded in 1948 for children with social, learning, and emotional needs. As part of their ongoing project on global and domestic sustainability, the team of high school students at AYLUS-GIC talked about bullying with the students of Reece School. 
Bullying is an important issue that affects students in every school. Kids who are struggle socially especially need to be aware of bullying and ways to counteract it in order to be best prepared for the future. This was the motive behind the idea of planning and giving volunteer lessons on bullying to the students at Reece School.
The volunteers were divided into 3 groups to teach in separate classrooms of small student groups. They began by having the students share what they think bullying is, and come up with a collective definition. After establishing the meaning, the GIC members asked the students some personal questions about their experiences at school, and passed around a “bead box” to collect anonymous responses. They helped analyze the overall feelings of the class toward school, and suggested solutions to common bullying problems encountered. The interactive lesson was well-received by the students at Reece, who eagerly participated in the discussions and wanted the high-schoolers to come again.
Besides the lesson, the AYLUS-GIC members also donated the books they’ve collected in the Book Drive. Since October, the group had been hosting a book drive at the Syosset Public Library and organizing the books in weekly group meetings. The drive came to a successful end as they were dropped off in numerous boxes at Reece School to be enjoyed by its students.
13 members participated in the Reece School visit, along with the GIC group advisor, Mr. Daly. They include (in alphabetical order): Michael Bentivegna, Julianna Bianco, Jawad Chowdhury, Joseph Delvecchio, Ezra Green, Sujoy Haldar, Elizabeth Huang, Neil Issacoff, Joshua Mathew, Yusuf Munawer, Mirwais Noory, Fengkai Xu, and Andy Yang. Jake Li and Annie Li assisted in sorting the donated books. GIC-AYLUS has been working with Dr. Myriah Rosengarten, the Head Psychologist of Reece, and plans on having future visits as a continuous volunteer program.
