Student Takes Lead in Relief Effort for Hurricane Victims

Reading a short story about two kids who helped the homeless didn’t convince 11-year-old Alisha Torgerson that youngsters could really make a difference. So she decided to test the waters for herself.

A week after the Hueneme Elementary School sixth-grader suggested that her class collect food for victims of Hurricane Mitch, a moving truck full of canned goods, blankets and medical supplies was on its way to Central America.

“I thought I couldn’t do this because I was too small, but now I know we can,” Alisha said.

The class first wrote letters to the principal, who agreed to involve the whole school. And when Supt. Robert Fraisse learned of the project, he went to the Board of Education, which gave the green light for a district-wide collection drive.

“We need to show the kids that they can make a difference, because it wouldn’t have happened without their prompting,” Fraisse said.

After just a few days, 10 schools from the Hueneme Elementary School District filled the truck Monday with food bound for Honduras, where more than a third of the country’s population of 6 million has been left homeless. The supplies will be shipped from Goleta.

Karena Fabiano, who teaches the combined fifth- and sixth-grade class that launched the project Nov. 16, said her students spent lunch and recess making fliers and organizing the donations. Students transformed the school stage into collection headquarters, with purple signs designating the areas for medical supplies, canned goods and blankets.

As the stage filled, the youngsters also wrote letters and drew pictures for Honduran children.

“It teaches them that contribution isn’t just money,” Fabiano said. “It can be something from the heart.”

The students’ reasons for chipping in are simple.

“If we would have gotten hit, people would have helped us,” said fifth-grader Destiny Haas. “So we wanted to help them.”

Schools in Santa Paula had the same desires to pitch in. More than a handful took up collections and delivered the goods Tuesday to Isbell Middle School, where a few teachers had started a drive a week earlier.

Peace Corps alumnus Bill Gourley, who served in Honduras a decade ago and now teaches industrial arts, suggested to teaching colleague Denis O’Leary that the school do its part in the relief efforts. Before they knew it, students from the school and others around the district were making deliveries. Gourley estimates that a ton of food and blankets has been collected.

Santa Paula donations will be taken to Los Angeles and shipped overseas from there, O’Leary said.

The teachers were surprised by the results and pleased with their students’ participation.

“I have not had one child ask me what they are going to get in return,” O’Leary said. “They’re feeling good.”

Sixth-grader Ricardo Sanchez said seeing television images of the hurricane tragedy scared him.

“I’m happy because we are helping people in Honduras so they won’t get sick,” the 11-year-old said.

Supt. Fraisse in Port Hueneme has been impressed by the students’ willingness to give so much.

“We have families that probably some would say are needy themselves,” he said, “and yet the kids feel very fortunate, and that they have a lot to be thankful for.”

And although Fabiano said her students have learned lifelong lessons about making a difference and working together to accomplish a goal, she has learned a thing or two from them as well.

“They are very kind kids,” she said. “Their hearts are bigger than anything I’ve ever known.”