Aid for Africans Sprouts From Grass-Roots Effort

Schoolchildren in Granada Hills held a dance to raise $6,000 to save one life. A Canoga Park man produced a video that helped buy a water-purification plant. And concert promoters in Burbank are planning a benefit production this May that they hope will bring in hundreds of thousands of dollars.

These are examples of the efforts by children, congregations and professionals of the San Fernando Valley who are singing, dancing, eating and fasting to raise money for African famine relief.

Many of the smaller efforts bring in only a few dollars, but every cent helps, said Jerry Kitchel, a spokesman for World Vision International, which has seven camps to feed refugees in Ethiopia.

“It’s the grass-roots efforts, the schools and the churches and the individual collections, that are important,” he said. “It can mean the difference between getting food to those who need it and not getting it there.”

Raised $6,500

In the Valley, grass-roots organizers include children at Abraham Heschel Day School in Northridge who raised more than $6,500 after they were told that it takes $6,000 to transport a Falasha, or Ethiopian Jew, into Israel and help him settle into a new life.

“They focused on the idea that they, even as children, could bring up enough money to save someone’s life and they did everything they could to meet that goal,” said Rabbi Jan Goldstein, who told the children about Israel’s Operation Moses--a project designed to transport Jewish refugees out of Africa.

Goldstein said the students raised the money by staging a dance, collecting donations in their classrooms and encouraging teachers to auction certain privileges, such as a free hall pass during class or less homework for one evening.

“They called on each student to get at least $18, because the letters chet and yud (the eighth and 10th characters of the Hebrew alphabet) put together in Hebrew spell life, or chai ,” Goldstein said. “The $6,500 they have gotten comes out to right around $18 per student.”

Some Valley children are just getting their collection activities started. At The Country School in North Hollywood, third- and fourth-grade pupils have collected cans and newspapers for the past three weeks to cash in at recycling centers. Their teacher, Gladys Johnston, said the youngsters have scraped together $14.

‘Little Bit Distressed’

“They’re a little bit distressed at how hard it is to get money together,” she said, “so we’re starting to send out representatives to all the other classes in the school to see if we can get the whole school involved.”

Another teacher at the school, Helen Anderson, said the first- and second-graders in her class baked cookies, cupcakes and brownies to sell for famine relief donations.

To help the children better understand the situation in Ethiopia, Anderson and several parents are trying to find out what is in the gruel served to Ethiopian refugees at relief organization food camps so they can make it in the classroom and let the pupils try it.

“When you’re dealing with children that are well-fed and well-clothed 6- and 7-year-olds, they just can’t imagine what it’s like to be hungry or to have only porridge to eat,” said Soozin Kazick, a parent. “We’re hoping they’ll empathize better if they taste the food.”

Students at Harvard School for Boys in Studio City, on the other hand, decided that a few grumbling stomachs might get the point across more quickly. Student leaders closed the school’s snack bar for a day to get their peers to donate their snack money to the famine relief effort.

To give the fund-raising effort a boost, the student council pledged to match every dollar with a dollar from $900 left over from last year’s drive to buy a kilometer in the Olympic torch run.

Ran Out of Matching Funds

The idea worked fine for the first three hours of the day--until they ran out of money to match the contributions.

“We were just hoping to pull in another few hundred dollars,” said student body officer Richard Rothenberg, 17, who worked at the collection table.

Student council members applied subtle pressure by marking a prominent red “H” on the hand of every student who donated. Including the money they had from the torch fund, the boys raised more than $2,500 in six hours.

Valley churchgoers also have been major contributors to relief funds. At West Valley Christian Church in Canoga Park, missions chairman Corky Ehlers, a videotape editor by trade, created a new video from a two-hour documentary on African agricultural needs and famine he produced three years ago for a Catholic Relief Service telethon.

Ehlers said he created the 20-minute video with hopes that the church’s 300-member congregation would donate $1,000 to split between Ethiopian famine relief and agricultural improvement projects in Kenya.

“I was flabbergasted when we counted it up and we had $2,000,” Ehlers said. Half the money was donated to World Vision, he said, and the other half was split evenly between a solar water purification project and a grain-processing facility project in Kenya.

Other Valley collection efforts also are taking advantage of the area’s entertainment industry, some on an ambitious scale.

Benefit Concert Planned

When Burbank resident Michael Boyd, a part-time musician, proposed staging a benefit concert in the 6,000-seat Starlight Amphitheater, city officials said they did not believe he knew how much preparation and planning he was talking about.

Boyd went to an attorney friend for advice, and the attorney contacted a friend who is a concert promoter.

Now the “You and Me Because We Care” concert promoters say they are making final plans for the charity event.

Concert promoter Jack Daniels said he will finish arrangements with Burbank city officials within the next week. If he signs contracts with the stars he is hoping for, Daniels said the concert could bring in as much as $400,000 once gate receipts, video rights and recording rights are sold.

He said he is negotiating with the city for waiver of rental fees on the amphitheater and for no-charge service from police and fire personnel on the night of the concert.

Richard Inga, city parks and recreations department director, confirmed that his staff has been discussing the event with Daniels, but said that he is waiting for written confirmation that Daniels has secured performers and reputable firms to handle security, parking, concessions and insurance.

“It looks positive, but we’re working day by day with him,” Inga said.

Another large-scale fund-raiser is in the works at the First Baptist Church of Van Nuys, where the Rev. Jim Rives said he is completing negotiations with 18 major individuals and groups to record a live album in the church’s 1,800-seat sanctuary.

Rives said the entertainers are “well-recognized in the secular world but they happen to be Christians.” He said several members of the church’s congregation who work in the recording industry are completing plans for the concert, which he said would take place within the next few weeks.

All proceeds from the concert and album, which is scheduled for worldwide distribution, are to be channeled into African famine relief agencies, Rives said.

He declined to disclose details about the recording until contracts are signed, but said that all arrangements are being handled by large, reputable recording and distribution agencies.