View Park Elementary School grade 1 class

Big News for the New Year, here’s the story: As some of you may know, we were fortunate enough to cross off #83: Teach an Elementary Class while we were in Watts in Los Angeles, CA (Check out USC Video). We spent a memorable day teaching grades 1, 3, and 5 at View Park Elementary School and were left struck by how incredibly awesome these kids were.

So, when we heard that View Park did not have a single computer in their entire school, we hit Venice Beach boardwalk and street performed to raise enough money to buy them a new computer.

street performing on Venice Beach to raise cash - Duncan on guitar, Ben on kitchen pot

We managed to raise enough money to purchase 2 new computers for the kids with the big smiles at View Park Elementary School.

presenting the new computer!

When we got back home from our Tour, the kids from the inner city had stayed with us, so we launched our ‘1st Ever Buried Life Computer Drive‘. Our goal was to raise enough money to buy a full computer lab and many people donated here.

Now, to bring the story full circle, the big news for the New Year is that we have just found 5 more computers View Park Elementary! We managed to get a hold of a company in L.A. that was upgrading their computer systems and they donated 5 of their sparsely used computers to! What a cracka!

View Park grade 3’s very excited

Now we are officially on our way to a fully functioning lab! With 7 computers under our belt and nearly enough for an 8th due to the grand ol’ Computer Drive, our sites are set.

Stay tuned - when we called Mrs. Harris (View Park Elementary’s principal) and revealed the news, our cameras were rolling… let’s just say she was a little bit pleased - Video coming soon. If you’d like to help, please do so HERE. Thank you everyone for your generosity, it will change these promising children’s lives.

Here’s to a more crackas to come in 2008! -ben

(P.S. Buried Life Store is officially up!)