The Homework Club helps island Native American students.

Adaline Rapada couldn’t have a more rapt audience.

As the sixth-grader reads from her Scholastic Magazine article about the upcoming Olympic games in Athens, Greece, Bainbridge High School junior John Emau kneels on the Ordway library floor next to her chair and listens attentively.

“Greece will face many challenges when Olympic games return home this summer, but as the originator of the games, Greece has unbeatable…qualifications,” Rapada reads with ease, hesitating only when she comes to the last word.

Emau helps her sound out the unfamiliar word, and Rapada plunges on, gliding along the polysyllabic stream with the confidence of an Olympic swimmer.

Emau and Rapada are members of Homework Club, an alliance of teens who belong to Youth Lead and Serve, which is in turn an affiliate program of the Boys and Girls Club and Bainbridge Native American students.

The Homework Club was formed last March as a community service project by the teens, who were awarded a $1,000 grant by Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit Youth Service America for their project.

Emau, BHS junior Bryan Conrad and freshman Henry Atkinson were inspired to work with Native American students, after meeting Lakota students at a Youth Lead and Serve leadership camp in Minnesota last July.

The teens were surprised to learn that their own island had a native population.

“At the camp, we learned that there was a huge Native American community around Bainbridge Island and on Bainbridge Island,” Emau said.

“We were thinking back to our own high school lives and we don’t even see it.”

Emau, Atkinson and Conrad decided to organize projects that would involve Native Americans so they could learn more. The project would also fulfill a service obligation to which they committed to at camp.

Because they wanted native youth involved, they worked with Millie Loughnane, of Suquamish and Stalo tribal heritage, who heads the decade-old Indian Education for the Bainbridge Island School District.

Loughnane helps about 43 students both academically and emotionally, and the schools serve as an important focal point for native children on Bainbridge – many of whom come from different tribes around the state – and their families.

That count doesn’t include First Nations students from Canadian tribes, who don’t formally qualify for Title VII programs because they aren’t members of a tribe recognized by the U.S. government.

“They told me their vision, (and) I told them that there was a need,” Loughnane said. “The teens are like a big brother, big sister, helping them with homework, asking them how they’re doing.

“I wouldn’t say they’re having difficulty in school, it’s more like having the opportunity to complete homework and just have someone there just to guide them through if they have questions. Sometimes parents get busy in the hustle-bustle of schedules.”

Homework Club fills another important need, giving native students scattered throughout the school system a place to gather.

That community-building is as important as the support to homework, Loughnane believes.

But for the kids in the Homework Club, the point is the fun.

“It’s very fun because I get to do my homework here and they help me out,” Ordway fourth-grader ReAnna Rapada said. “And then we, like, do a short game outside.”