Who would have thought one night in a college dorm could inspire a large group of teenage band members to consider upping their game and trying for college themselves? We didn’t.

Neither us here at Catalyst Exhibits nor the 52 members of the Hubbard High School Band saw it coming but we are delighted that it did.

The band is one of our favourite projects and we’ve been helping keep them in instruments over the past couple of years? Did you know a new tuba could burn a $5,000 hole in your pocket? Anyway, on their last field trip, which involved a performance that had them marching 4 miles around the Indy 500 track in the baking sun, the members also got spend a day working and practising on campus with the Butler University band. That night they crashed at the dorms.

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When it comes to getting around large parts of Cameroon there’s no point waiting for taxis or buses because they don’t really exist. Which is why Area 3 was surprised to discover that the motorbike it provided to get teachers across rough terrain to help teach kids in remote villages was also proving a big hit with the locals.

As a taxi. Read the rest of this entry »

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Most of us take being able to read for granted but for many young teenagers, reading is a challenge and some have been left far behind by their school friends.

Teacher, Debbie Vaille in Boulder, Colorado, has been helping them catch up with a unique reading programme, made possible by Catalyst Exhibits’ Area 3 charity work.

If faking how to read was a subject in school, then these kids were scoring straight ’A’s all of the time. Her special class of 12-14-year olds had been faking they could for years but were too embarrassed to be seen reading kids’ books. Read the rest of this entry »

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Poverty-stricken Cameroon is a tough place for kids but now, for some at least, education can be literally heard revving its way to their village on a regular basis. Catalyst Exhibits Area 3 charity work took a direct approach to the thorny problem of how to educate a large number of children spread across an inhospitable landscape. The solution: a Galaxy YH 150-5 motorbike.

Biking teachers is not the most common image you’d conjure but, if the children couldn’t make it to the teacher, why not bring the teacher to the children?

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