The news is calling it the disaster of the decade; a bold statement considering the decade has just begun. Bold and I hope accurate, as I pray our planet sees no greater disaster during this decade or during any other. I am referring to the massive earthquake in Haiti.
My first thought upon hearing the news was sheer bewilderment. How could Haiti, one of the poorest nations, possibly be expected to recover from a magnitude seven earthquake? They already had so little, now they have even less. Practically every building in a city of three million was flattened. No electricity, no clean water, an unusable sea port and a barely functioning air port. Almost every hospital, gone. Most of the schools, gone. The orphanages, of which there were many to house the thousands of orphans Haiti had before the quake…now almost all gone. Stores and markets, gone. And the homes, many nothing more than a concrete room or two, now all destroyed.
I’ve heard estimates of upward of three hundred thousand dead or injured in a city of three million and in a country of nine million. Think about that. One in every ten residents of Port-Au-Prince and one in every thirty people in the country are now either dead or injured.
When our grade school secretary, Melanie Kennedy, heard about the tragedy, she felt that we as a school should do something. She suggested a Penny Drive. Before she started the drive, Mrs. Kennedy wanted to find a Kansas organization that delivered aide to Haiti. Through her research, she found Heart to Heart, an aide organization run out of Olathe, started with the help of the Kansas Rotary. Heart to Heart began with a mission to deliver medical supplies to Russia, and were so successful that now they have branched out to help people in need all over the world.
Their humanitarian efforts focus on improving health, and they primarily distribute medical supplies and food. They have many years of experience helping the poor in Haiti and now have made the ravaged country their number one concern.
We called their Olathe office and they were thrilled with our proposed Penny Drive. They guaranteed that almost every cent raised would go directly to helping the Haitian people.
So Mrs. Kennedy put a large glass bottle outside the office with a small sign announcing it as a Penny Drive for Haiti. No big announcement. No huge banner. No all-school assembly. Just an empty bottle.
The bottle began to rapidly fill. By the second day, there was a line of students and parents stopping to put in pennies, nickels, dimes and quarters, and by the end of day three, the bottle was full. I tried to lift it and it must have weighed thirty pounds. Mrs. Kennedy lugged it to the bank where it was counted.
After three days, the drive had earned more $130 dollars. But the miracle didn’t stop there. The next day, two students each brought a twenty-dollar bill, which we added to other bills anonymously given for the people of Haiti. The bottle continued to fill with change, and Mrs. Kennedy is now due for another bank run.
The Penny Drive at Hill City Grade School is only a small part of what has become a global outpouring of generosity. Even in the brutal economic times, with so many people out of work or struggling to make ends meet, there has been no shortage of giving.
I am proud that our community can be part of the effort to help. I hope that this drive will teach our kids that even a small town school in Kansas can make a difference. It all adds up, a few pennies at a time.
My hope now is that together, our school, our country, and our planet, can turn the disaster of the decade into the humanitarian relief effort of the century.
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