Haiti Donations

HAITI Donations - Jacquie Hawken, teacher at Henry Larsen Public School featured in Friday January 22^nd edition of the Citizen.

Hawken

With just a few mason jars and a lot of gumption, teacher Jacquie Hawken and the students at Henry Larsen Public School raised more than $2,000 for Haiti in two days, with more to come. Here, some students who each have relatives in Haiti, proudly hold up their mason jars. They include, from left, Jennifer Constant, 12, her sister Angeley Constant, 11, Rudolph Joseph, 11, and Kendal Valery, 13.

Photograph by: Julie Oliver, The Ottawa Citizen, The Ottawa Citizen

The fundraising power of schools has never been so evident as when students began responding to the startling media images that put a face on the devastation that is Haiti, making the cause all too personal, Joanne Laucius reports.

At École Catholique Secondaire Garneau, a French-language high school in Orléans, the staff and 1,100 students donated almost $7,000 for Haiti earthquake relief in just three days.

Two students brought in $500 donations from their families and another 10 brought in cheques for $100, says chaplain Gilles Thériault.

"We started Wednesday morning. By Friday, it was close to $6,000," he says.

About 900 students in the French Catholic board are Haitian or have family roots there, and there are 10 Haitian teachers at Garneau, including some who have lost family members or are still awaiting word. As of Wednesday morning, the board's schools had raised $17,000 and the board itself had added another $10,000.

"We feel like it's family," says Thériault.

At Henry Larsen Elementary School in Orléans, it took students three days to fill jars with $850 in bills and change. Ridgemont High School raised $1,000 in spare change alone. At St. Daniel Catholic School in Ottawa's west end, which has only 86 students, it took less than a week to raise about $1,000.

"The kids' eyes are wide open and they really care," says St. Daniel principal Elizabeth Dean.

Schools have become powerful community hubs when it comes to raising funds for humanitarian disaster relief. School-based campaigns are spontaneous, grassroots efforts that work through word-of-mouth, with almost zero overhead or central planning.

Across Ottawa, students are paying to "pie" teachers with a faceful of whipped cream. Others are holding penny and loonie drives, raffles, pyjama days, candy-gram campaigns, pizza lunches or cupcake sales. They are knitting scarves for sale, and challenging their teachers to benefit volleyball games. One school held a "hats on for Haiti" day and another challenged each classroom to "raise 80 for Haiti."

The English public school board plans to take advantage of the federal government's promise to match contributions to the Canadian Red Cross and will roll out a week-long "$2 to help Haiti" campaign starting next Monday. There's the potential to raise $300,000.

At St. Daniel, the staff began fundraising on Wednesday on behalf of the school's head custodian, Jean-Claude St. Fort, who came to Canada from Haiti in 1979.

St. Fort supports nine family members who live just outside Port-au-Prince. Two of the families are living in the streets since their houses collapsed, and one group is sleeping in the family's walled garden because of the cracks in the walls of their house.

Dean challenged a friend at the school board's human-resources office to match the school's donation. The total now tops $1,000, which will be sent directly to St. Fort's family in Haiti when wire money transfers are again possible.

"I'm very lucky. I work for the school board. I have a lot of support," says St. Fort.

For the school, the bottom line is taking care of each other as a community, says Dean.

"Families that are new to Canada are often the first to open their pockets," she says. "We had parents walking through the doors the next day asking to help."

In the case of Henry Larsen Public School, all it took to bring in donations was a jar in each classroom.

"Our school's motto is 'Through Caring and Sharing We Learn.' Every kid had taken that to heart," says Grade 8 teacher Jacquie Hawken. She points out that both provincial and school-board policies insist that empathy be integrated into the curriculum.

"It's educating the kids that we need to share the bounty we have in Canada," says Hawken. "And they will carry it on."

Paul Reed, a professor of sociology and law at Carleton University who tracks trends in giving and volunteerism, says school-based efforts hitch onto the idealism of youth and the pleasure of being involved in a common cause.

But the crisis in Haiti has grabbed the youthful imagination even more than previous humanitarian causes. It takes no advertising because the media images have been so startling and touching. And because there are so many Haitians in eastern Canada, the appeal is also personal, says Reed.

"This is a humanitarian crisis that has a face. They can act together and be part of something that is bigger than everyday life."

Meanwhile, growing numbers of charities are recognizing the fundraising power of schools.

The Ontario arm of the Terry Fox Foundation, for example, raised between $6.5 million and $7 million last year through about 3,500 school-based Terry Fox runs across the province.

The response from schools tells us something about what's happening in Canadian society, says Reed.

"I don't care how much they raise," he says. "We're building a generation of people who will be charitable donors and volunteers when they're adults.

"The payoff will be 15 years down the road when these students are adult citizens."