Five students left Bermuda International Airport yesterday, for the first leg of a long journey that will land them in disaster-struck Mississippi ? by which time Hurricane Rita may have brought more disaster to the area.

The group of 16 year-olds will be accompanied by one teacher, and will join flocks of other students who are also headed for Mississippi to finally reach the city of Lumberton, just 98 miles north-east of New Orleans, to help in relief efforts there.

This movement was pulled together by the Atlantic Union of Seventh Day Adventists, which asked the Bermuda Institute to join its sister academies in a relief effort for the victims of Hurricane Katrina.

The Institute made a prompt decision last week to go ahead with the project, and the group are already on their way.

Deshay Caines, Kristin Douglas, Micrae Smith, Mackinnon Eldridge and Peter-Paul Taylor were the first students to produce parental consent and the money for the flight there and back.

The group will be flying only as far as Massachusetts, however, and will make the rest of the long journey south by bus ? meaning arrival time in Lumberton will not be until Sunday morning.

The students will be expected to ?rough it up?, Frigga Simmons of the Bermuda Institute told yesterday, and are prepared with their own sleeping bags.

Once they arrive at their base ? sister academy, Bass Memorial ? they will be provided with the basics of food, water and shelter, but there will be no luxuries to be had.

A gruelling schedule will include long days, and short nights, but the students of the Bermuda Institute are no strangers to challenging circumstances.

Most of them have taken part in the school?s annual missions, which included a trip to the Dominican Republic, last year, to build a church.

The students have no reservations about their trip, Ms. Simmons said, and are excited at the prospect of ?making a difference?.

Ms Simmons told that the current tropical storm warning in New Orleans has not yet halted plans to reach Bass Memorial, but that the Atlantic Union is keeping abreast of weather and travel conditions in the area. The students? scheduled return to Bermuda is October 3.