Back row: Teachers Judith Maisonneuve, Sarah Visel, Susan Friedrichs. Front row: Third-graders Alden Evans, Franny Motley, Avery Culp.
What started out as a hallway conversation among teachers at Brandon Elementary School has ballooned into a full-blown fundraising drive that has raised relief to Haiti in the range of $3,000 … and counting. (UPDATE: $3,500!) (FINAL UPDATE: $4,000!) Students have taken a cue from teachers Susan Friedrichs, Sarah Visel, Nza Willingham and Judith Maisonneuve and found myriad ways to help out victims of the earthquake that rocked the nation. Coins turned into dollars, and dollars turned into checks. Visel noted that the school was familiar with helping out in a disaster since it had performed a similar drive after Hurricane Katrina.
The timing of all this was remarkable; Maisonneuve, a native of the country, had just returned from a Christmas trip with several relatives living in the United States, and had shared her experiences with her French class. When the earthquake hit, students asked Maisonneuve and other teachers how they could help, and coin drive began. “It was all the children’s doing, really,” said Maisonneuve, who brought in photos and other artwork from her trip to Haiti, which in turn inspired artwork and essays from her class. Student are even considering selling their art for more relief aid. “They keep coming in with more and more ideas on how to raise money for Haiti.”
Third-grader Franny Motley asked family members and even tapped her piggy bank. Classmate Alden Evans also asked her relatives, and scrounged for loose change. Another classmate, Avery Culp, had money left over from a fundraiser in which her family had participated for a town in Africa, and they added more money to that pot. The entire third-grade class, Principal Karen Evans noted, provided all ove the needed coin-rolling tasks.
The Brandon students’ passion for helping this neighbor country shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise considering that Brandon is an International Baccalaureate school. Community service is threaded through all three of the programs: Primary, Middle and Diploma. Students are required to perform some kind of community-service project to earn an IB diploma. IB has no minimum community-service requirement for the Primary Years Program.
Evans is thrilled at her school’s level of commitment: “We’ve found the more we do, the more we want to do.”
Maisonneuve noted that, so far, all of her Haitian relatives are fine.