Business students at Mercer Island High School are collecting school supplies to send to a brand new Somali STEM school next month.

Mercer Trade Inc., a student-led company based through Jen McLellan’s International Entrepreneurship class, bills itself as “global business through a humanitarian lens.”

A couple weeks ago, the group began a supplies drive for the Burao Academy of Science and Technology, a co-ed boarding school under construction in northern Somalia that is scheduled to open in September.

The school is the brainchild of Starbucks executive Asha Farah, who grew up a Somali nomad before immigrating to the U.S. as a teenager. Farah approached McLellan and MIHS college and career readiness director Kristine Vanderhoeven about a partnership with her Karin Foundation, a nonprofit geared toward supporting Somali education.

Farah gave a career talk at Mercer Island High School in April, with one student in attendance afterward going around to other classes and raising around $300 to help purchase supplies. Mercer Trade Inc. used the money raised to purchase 40 some desks and chairs from school surplus sales held within the district.

Being the product of a business class, Mercer Trade Inc. is typically more profit-focused. This is the first humanitarian outreach project for the class.

“We really learned a lot about how much harder it was to get educated in different societies as well and how much effort you would really have to put in to rise as [Farah] has,” said senior Jack O’Connell.

Everything Mercer Trade Inc. has accumulated so far is stored in a Bellevue warehouse before being shipped to a cargo container in Tacoma at the end of June. Starbucks will send the container of supplies from Tacoma to Somalia.

The Burao Academy will accept 50 students when it opens in the fall, though entrance exams drew over 1000 potential students.

It’s possible the partnership will stretch into next year’s curriculum. McLellan said she hopes her students are able to maintain a connection with the Burao Academy, though every year, each new entrepreneurship class determines what the focus of their business will be. Each class dissolves its business at the school year’s end, though McLellan noted previous classes have made international connections that stretched over several years.

“It’s the students that drive the decision making, so we’ll see. We’ll try to keep it open,” she said. “If the class itself doesn’t choose to maintain a connection next year, I’ll probably try to slide the connection into some of my other organizations to keep a Mercer Island presence supporting this academy.”

Mercer Trade Inc. is still collecting supplies and working to fill out its wishlist of items to send. The class is accepting supplies at MIHS and will wrap collection June 3. The container is set to ship out June 13.

Supplies needed include: pencils and pens, notebooks, graphing and lined paper, binders, rulers, dividers and folders, dry erase markers and erasers, pencil sharpners, calculators, crayons, highlighters, sticky notes, pencil puches, permanent markers and glue sticks. For more, visit www.mercerislandschools.org/mihs.