On the first day of a fundraising effort that will go on all month, students raised $2,600 selling a campaign-style button Grade 9 student Erin de Ridder designed to promote the school’s own Typhoon Haiyan relief fund.
The student council chipped into the total by dedicating the $2 per scholar normally collected on “civvies day,” when students are allowed to ditch their uniforms for their own personal style.
Many of the students at Senator O’Connor have family in the central Philippines hit hard by the storm. Grade 9 student Gabriella Bunag has cousins, grandparents, uncles and aunts in Iliolo province.
“My mom was walking around in circles, crying,” she said.
Things are getting better back home. Electricity is back and the Canadian DART team (Disaster Assistance Response Team) is providing clean water and medical assistance in the area where the Bunag family lives. But the student effort is about much more than helping family. It’s also about extending that family solidarity as far as possible, said student council president Marivic Victolero.
“It was an easy decision,” to dedicate the “civvies day” funds to typhoon relief and get behind a spontaneous student effort to raise money. The campaign buttons sold out in less than a day, sparking a scramble to get more made.
Spencer Ki lived through a couple of typhoons when his family lived in the Philippines. As a middle class family living in a properly constructed house in a large city, the Kis survived the storms just fine. But the Grade 10 student is well aware of how devastating a huge storm can be for poor and rural Filipinos.
“The Philippines has this stuff all the time,” he said.“We should feel responsible.”
Doing unto others as you would have them do unto you shouldn’t be a hard concept to apply to the typhoon, said Victolero.
“Seeing that huge of a tragedy, you just think, ‘Wow, I really need to help them,’” she said.
The entire Toronto Catholic District School Board will get in on the act Nov. 19 (the Register’s press day) with a “Toonie Tuesday.” More than 90,000 students, teachers and support staff at the board’s 201 schools will be encouraged to contribute a two-dollar coin for the Philippines. Other school boards are heading up similar drives. The Peterborough Victoria Northumberland and Clarington Catholic District School Board is encouraging students and the entire community to give to the Canadian Catholic Organization for Development and Peace before Dec. 9 to ensure donations will be doubled by federal government matching contributions.
“As a Catholic school system one of the key things we teach our students is that we are all God’s children and we are all citizens of the world,” board chair Granville Anderson said in a press release.