20979: (Hermantin)Miami-Herald-Students send help to Haiti (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: leonie hermantin <lhermantin@hotmail.com>

Posted on Wed, Mar. 31, 2004

Students send help to Haiti

BY HILLARY WASCH

Herald Writer


BROWARD COUNTY

Growing up in Port-au-Prince, Maria Ingrid Chrisphonte remembers the poverty
that surrounded her.

That's why when she received an e-mail urging teachers to get their students
to participate in a clothing and food drive for Haitian children, she knew
she had to respond.

''I'm very sensitive when it comes to people from my country,'' said
Chrisphonte, who lived in Haiti from ages 10 to 19. ``I felt that we needed
to do something at this moment.''

For the past three weeks, sixth- and seventh-graders in Chrisphonte's
English for Speakers of Other Languages classes at Nova Middle School in
Davie have been collecting and packing clothes, toys, blankets, canned food
and pasta for a drive she titled Operation Rescue Haiti.

The idea for the project came from Jean F. Colin, executive director of the
Haitian Health Foundation of South Florida, a small organization that
provides food, medical and other assistance to distressed Haitians in South
Florida and in Haiti.

''I saw a picture in the newspaper of a young girl with flies on her face in
Haiti and I knew we needed to take responsibility,'' said Colin, who was
born in Haiti in 1950 and lived there until age 20.

Colin sent an e-mail to Dr. Frank Till, superintendent of schools in
Broward, who then forwarded it to all of the schools, and that is how
Chrisphonte learned of the idea.

Food For the Poor, a charity that provides assistance to the poorest
sections of Caribbean and Central American countries, volunteered trucks and
other shipping resources to Operation Rescue Haiti to get the items to the
most troubled sections of the country.

Students at Nova Middle School have been collecting items either from their
own homes, from their neighbors or through their churches to fill up three
truckloads of goods.

''It feels good because you are helping others and not just yourself,''
seventh-grader Klayra Medina, 13, of Fort Lauderdale said. ``It's not fair
that they don't get the same opportunities we do.''

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