GRAY – Freshman Nick Bennett is scouting for donations for an online charity auction.

“I’ve e-mailed L.L. Bean to donate to our cause,” he said Monday.

Senior Katherine Slye wants to do something too. “I haven’t figured out how I’m going to help with the online auction, but I’m going to do everything I can,” she said.

Bennett, Slye and other students are inspired by their school’s community service project: Care Highway International, a nonreligious, nonpartisan charity that adopts educational and medical projects.

Students in most schools perform community service, but for the first time Gray-New Gloucester High School is participating in a school-wide project. Getting students to focus on one project will have a bigger impact, Principal Paul Penna said.

On Monday, the director of Care Highway – Christopher Morrison of London – visited the school and spoke at an assembly. He said he was on a college break when he decided to help war victims in Bosnia. What was supposed to be a few weeks of volunteerism led him to eventually build an organization that spans three continents.

Morrison works six months a year taking Canadian and American tourists around Europe. “I really like that job, but I really love this one,” he said of Care Highway, for which he doesn’t draw a salary.

His message to students was that when they understand how some people live, “you’ll see your life is not so bad.” He believes that knowledge will inspire them to have compassion for others, and to help them.

For instance in eastern Africa, many live “in the largest slum in the world, truly,” Morrison said. “They have no running water, no sanitary system. They have nothing.” One of Care Highway’s projects is building a maternity hospital there, where many women have children in the field and bushes.

Trouble in Bosnia

Morrison said he got the idea to create an organization after he was nearly killed while delivering food and medicine to villagers in Sarajevo after the Bosnian war.

Serbian soldiers attacked him, stealing his truck, the food, his clothes and his passport. They severely beat him and left him for dead in the snow. Villagers took Morrison to a makeshift hospital.

Lying there not knowing if he would live, Morrison said he began to feel sorry for himself. He asked himself what was he doing there; Sarajevo was not his problem. He couldn’t wait to get on a plane to London.

The hospital was filled with children, but “there was no noise coming from those children. They were thirsty, hungry,” Morrison said. Rats scurried around in the filth. In the bed next to him was a boy who lost a leg after stepping on a mine. The boy smiled at him. “In the dark there he was, looking at me in compassion,” Morrison said.

His attitude changed. “I started to look around and saw what the children really needed: food, water, doctors.” He asked his friends, who were arranging his funeral, not to come see him empty-handed. The children got help. Morrison got better. “I helped them; they helped me. That was the foundation of Care Highway,” he said.

The goal isn’t just to give, it’s about finding out what people need and helping them get on their feet, Morrison said. Everyone is busy with their own lives and problems. “But if we take a moment to consider others, we can make a difference.”

Morrison’s message hit home, students said.

“I’ve been involved with teachers helping Haiti, but this has inspired me to do more,” said freshman Nick Bennett.

Senior Mike Churchill said he hopes to do something with his life like Morrison did with his. “If more people helped out it would make the world a better place.”