VALDOSTA — The Valdosta City School System’s 2008-09 International Service Learning Exchange team will host a 5K Fun Run at 8 a.m. Saturday, Oct. 18.

Registration will begin at 7:30 a.m. on the Burton Street campus of Valdosta Middle School. The run will begin and end at the school, and prizes will be awarded in a host of categories.

All runners will receive a commemorative T-shirt.

Entry is $30 and can be paid on race day.

All proceeds will benefit the International Service Learning Exchange, which was originally organized by longtime educator Vicki Burt to pair students at Valdosta Middle School with students at the Colne Community School in Brightlingsea, Essex, United Kingdom.

The focus of the International Service Learning Exchange is on increasing cultural understanding, renewing the spirit of citizenship and providing a broader connection to the global community.

Working alongside their British counterparts, the approximately two dozen Valdosta Middle School students will renovate an old Valdosta City School System bus, turning it into a mobile literacy lab — one complete with a variety of books for younger students to enjoy in the coming years. The British are scheduled to arrive in Valdosta on Thursday, Jan. 22.

For 10 days, they will live, play and experience America and, of course, Valdosta, with their new South Georgia friends.

In June of 2009, the Valdosta Middle School students will complete the exchange by traveling to Brightlingsea.

During the first International Service Learning Exchange in 1997, emphasis was placed on Victorian history, with the British students helping the American students produce a book of historical comparisons.

Two years later, the exchange resulted in the development of the PAWSmobile, a mobile science laboratory used by the Valdosta City School System.

Following the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the exchange continued in 2003 with an emphasis on citizenship.

In 2005, while in Valdosta, the Colne Community School students created a compact disc with the history of the educational system in Valdosta, worked with a local author to write a book of oral history from the student perspective, developed a dramatic interpretation of the history of economics on Lowndes County and worked with quilters to design and develop a quilted documentary of the exchange, among other things.

In 2007, the students focused on Georgia history.

To learn more about the 2008-09 International Service Learning Exchange, contact Debbie Paine, coordinator, via email at dpaine@gocats.org or via telephone at (229) 333-8555.