James Gregg / Arizona Daily Star

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It all started with a $200 grant that helped Hohokam Middle School students buy a camera.

That allowed the students to document the need for sidewalks around their far Southwest Side school.

That triggered four years of work that included presentations to government officials and grant writing.

That resulted in a $600,000 award that ultimately will translate into a multiuse path along the route to school, at 7400 S. Settler Road, near West Valencia Road and South Camino de Oeste.

And the whole process spelled a dramatic mind shift for Samantha Aguilar, who was part of the original group of students and is now preparing to go away to college.

"I learned then that if I put my mind to something, I could make changes," said Aguilar, who plans to study chemistry. "I don't have to just sit back and accept things that are going on. If I can find the right people and say what I need to say, maybe I can change things for the better."

Aguilar was part of an eighth-grade elective class that picks a community project each year and builds on previous class projects, too. Her class pushed schoolwide recycling and launched a walk-to-school day to increase awareness of energy conservation.

And the students decided to do something about the state of the pedestrian commute to school, where any of its roughly 800 students had to trudge along the dirt paths littered with broken glass and rocks, or walk in the street with a posted speed limit of 40 mph.

The class was able to buy a camera with a small "Pay It Forward" grant from the Educational Enrichment Foundation, a non-profit agency that supports the Tucson Unified School District and aims to get more money into classrooms.

Armed with their camera, the students waited along Tetakusim Drive to snap safety problems. They got shots of students on skateboards or bicycles riding in the street. They shot the big puddles that accumulated during rainstorms. They showed where students could trip.

Samantha's mother, Dawn, a 52-year-old health assistant, said parents weren't aware of any students being injured on their way to school, although her own daughter came home with scraped knees after a fall on the rocky roadway.

"It's one of those routes that people do take to get to the casino, so at times it can be busy, and it makes you kind of nervous to see people speeding up and down and kids walking or riding in the street."

After taking the photos, the students created a PowerPoint presentation to take on the road. They took their case to TUSD officials, who steered them to Pima County transportation workers. They ultimately hooked up with grant writers to tap into Community Development Block Grant funding.

Stacia Reeves, who teaches Hohokam's "think-tank" class, said she was thrilled to get notice that the improvements were on the way, but she said the process meant more than that.

"I felt like regardless of what our results were — whether they would get positive feedback or not, whether they would get funding or not — I felt it was important that kids be involved in hands-on learning."

As Aguilar graduated from Palo Verde High Magnet School, she wrote Reeves a letter thanking her for being the teacher who made the biggest stamp on her life as she prepares to move to Phoenix with a bowling scholarship at Grand Canyon University. She said she survived the nerves that come with verbal presentations. She saw the power of continuity, as classes after hers continued to work for the project. And she learned about the power of community.

"That class really opened my eyes to what's going on in the world and how one voice can make a difference," she said.

That experience, too, helped her to follow politics more than a typical high school student does. "I'm all over this whole election thing," she said, adding that she carefully researched the entire primary field on both the Republican and Democratic sides to consider everything from stances on abortion to gay marriage. "I need to know what's going on in this world," she said. "I'm not going to choose between Obama and McCain based on whether they like tacos."

Foundation spokeswoman Linda Goode said that even small gifts can make a big difference for schools, which is why the non-profit organization also offers mini-grants of up to $1,000 every year to teachers who make good pitches for the money.

In 25 years, the foundation has funneled about $3.5 million into classrooms in 100 schools.

This month, for example, the foundation will give:

● $377.83 to buy bug viewers and inflatable insects so Dunham Elementary School students can study arthropods.

● $994.74 to help second-graders at Borton Primary Magnet School see energy being produced by pedaling a stationary bicycle linked to a generator.

● $630.95 for spotting scopes and an Audubon workshop for the bird-watching club at Davidson Elementary School, which also is growing a butterfly garden on the school grounds and will conduct a quarterly bird count.

● $1,000 for the end-of-the-year publication by Catalina High Magnet School students learning English, including refugees from India, Iraq, Somalia and Sierra Leone, who use writing, poetry, art and photography to tell their stories. The money also will allow for a formal reading at the end of the year.

Goode said the money is small in the scheme of things. But she added, "It takes a bunch of little drops of rain to fill up the river and make it flow."

And in the case of Hohokam, she said: "It took awhile to come to a happy ending. But the fact that it did just shows that anything is possible with enough energy and creativity."