International travel can be expensive, and so can an international education. Luckily, the students at the International School of Brooklyn study in the friendliest borough in the city, where neighbors and community advocates have generously supported the school since it opened in 2006. The school, which offers an internationally standardized curriculum to its young students, held its annual fundraiser last Wednesday at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.

"Our vision is to be a preschool to twelfth grade that helps students become global citizens, but also teaches them to look at issues in their own neighborhood through a global perspective," said Rebecca Skinner, the school's co-founder.

Since its opening, the school has added a grade each year, and while it currently only teaches pre-school through 2nd grade, its staff is confident that its programming will flourish in the later grades as it has in the earlier ones.

The curriculum is based on the International Baccalaureate program, which is a definitive educational qualification for European schools. Additionally, students are required to participate in French or Spanish immersion classes.

"We believe our students will become not only bi-lingual, but bi-literate and have a cultural understanding of the language they study," said Skinner, though she admits that this level of education is reserved for the later years of middle and high school.

In order to fulfill their ambitions of providing a complete international education for its students, the International School of Brooklyn holds annual fundraisers that, with the support of community leaders and businesses, helps the school grow and improve with each passing year through silent and live auctions.

In addition to raising money and awareness for the school, ISB's staff likes to return the favor to the community by presenting the Community Excellence Award to people or organizations that have positively benefited the Brooklyn community in an international way. This year's honoree was Dan Zane, a Brooklyn-based, Grammy award-winning musician whose international instrumental compositions have proven to be extremely popular with the students and parents at ISB.

"A lot of his music reflects the local culture of Brooklyn," said Skinner, who presented the handmade award to Zane at the gala.

Wednesday's fundraiser was an enormous success, and Skinner was pleased to report that the school met their target in what she described as a particularly challenging financial year.