For the third year, graduating students at Frances Kelsey Secondary School in Mill Bay have found ways to save money at their grad and donate that money to build a school.

This year, the students are raising money to build a high school building for the Mamello English Medium school in Lesotho, an innovative school that includes students with handicaps, orphans whose parents have died of AIDS and others.

Integration of special needs students into the classroom affords disabled and mentally handicapped children the opportunity to learn, and fosters a culture of tolerance and compassion.

"How better to celebrate our own achievement of our high school education than to make sure children in other countries have the same opportunities?" asks Janet Whitney-Brown, head of the Current Global Issues Club that organizes the event, and who invited Mamaello, the Lesotho school's founder to speak at Frances Kelsey School in 2006.

"Besides," she adds, "students around the world are our peers. The world needs our generation to be educated, because we will face global problems together.

“It is important to all of us that students our age in other countries are getting the education they need to take on the challenges ahead."

Janet saved money on her grad dress by mending and cleaning a dress that her great-grandmother wore in the late 1920's.

A textile conservation expert at the Royal BC Museum generously explained to her how to wash 80-year-old silk lace.

With a bright, fresh underlayer, the grad dress cost only $32, and Janet donated the rest of her dress budget to build the high school in Lesotho.

More than fifty graduates skipped limo rentals or fancy arrivals and instead chose to walk together up the school's roadway, in the walk that has become known as "Walking for Education."