STUDIO CITY : Students Unite to Assist Young People in Kobe

Three schools came together Thursday afternoon in Studio City to present letters, a scroll signed by an entire school and $2,000 that students collected to help their Japanese counterparts in earthquake-ravaged Kobe.

Students from Woodlake Avenue School, St. Michael and All Angels School and Campbell Hall collaborated on the effort in hopes not only of lifting the spirits of Japanese students, but also to aid in their recovery, said William Price, Osaka Sangyo University’s Los Angeles director.

Price and Tadao Mizumoto, chairman of the university, accepted the donation on behalf of Kobe residents.

“There is one good thing about earthquakes,” said 10-year-old Jenna Cutter of Woodlake Avenue School in Woodland Hills. “They bring us closer together.”

Her fourth grade class hopes to adopt a class in Japan and visit the students during a July trip to Kobe, she said.

Jenna, along with classmate Lindsay Garber, presented a box decorated with pennies and candy hearts to Osaka officials. It was filled with balloons to represent sunshine, seashells that will allow the Japanese students to hear the sounds of California, letters from students and some pencils, stickers and tissues, Jenna said.

Students at Campbell Hall in Studio City contributed their own letters to the students in Kobe.

“I was struck when I read the letters because all the kids had themselves lived through the Northridge earthquake,” said Campbell Hall Principal Theresia Cunningham. “They wrote things like ‘We have been through it and we know that you can make it too.’ ”

Angela Collins, student council adviser at St. Michael in Studio City, said her students had gotten to know the Japanese exchange students at Osaka when the school shared a campus with them for three months after theirs was damaged in the Northridge quake.

“It was traumatic for our students even though the earthquake was across the world,” said Collins.