Education partnership extends opportunities

For all of Iowa's students to achieve a great destiny, our schools must challenge them wherever they are. Iowa BIG is designed for the 21st century, and does exactly that.

The LBA Foundation serves Cedar Rapids' students on a daily basis. Our students want the same things we all do: a wide-open future with a chance at success. As an elective course offered within LBA, BIG helps us serve our students while they learn to serve and engage with the community.

Iowa BIG offers our students the ability to get a real feel of what a future in their area of interest might be like. At Iowa BIG, students work on projects that advance their personal mission statement, keep them striving toward greater engagement in their community, expand their intellectual capacity and create the all-important habit of leadership.

LBA students create a personal mission statement as a statement of purpose. Iowa BIG enables them to use that purpose as a map to drive their lives toward their hopes and dreams.

Iowa BIG students collaborating with our organization are using existing talents and discovering new ones while working on their project - a documentary film on athletic rivalries in the Cedar Rapids Community School District.

For them, this is a project that will survive the ages, and they're excited to be involved.

Like any student in the Cedar Rapids area, LBA students sometimes grow beyond the scope of the classroom. The philanthropic, volunteer and business-related activities available to students through Iowa BIG helps draw students closer to the community by allowing them not just to be in it, but also to be of it.

' Alphonce O'Bannon is the Executive Director of the LBA Foundation. Comments: al@lbajourney.org