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Students benefit Red Cross |
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Tuesday, 23 February 2010 |
By James Leigh — Staff Writer
A student-led effort by students at Bismarck High School resulted in the presentation of $1,000 to the American Red Cross to help aid relief workers in Haiti.
According to Chris Beaver, a world history teacher at BHS, the students were given a prompt, but they did all the work.
The students spent approximately three weeks talking to businesses, family, friends and anyone else they could find to donate money to this cause.
Each student was responsible for making a flyer that was then posted in different areas of the Bismarck area, and some students even went to businesses in Hot Springs and Arkadelphia to get donations.
The students said that there were a few school clubs who donated money, and some students gave the change out of their pockets each day.
Dave Fastenow, Interim Director of the Ouachita Area Chapter of the American Red Cross, said that the entire amount would be sent to Haiti.
“One hundred percent of it will go the the relief effort,” he said in response to one of the students’ questions about the funds. “Anytime that we get money like this [that is earmarked for a specific disaster], we funnel it directly to that relief effort. It will get deposited, and then the office in Little Rock will send all the money set aside for that down there. We are very passionate about when people send money to help others.”
Fastenow explained that although the Red Cross is currently in the media due to the Haiti earthquake, they do work here in the county as well.
“We do a lot of that without a lot of publicity,” he said. “Our ability to do all the work in the county is based on people sending money to us.”
Fastenow said that one of the biggest problems for the relief workers in Haiti is disease.
“A lot of our effort is going into vaccinations and shelter,” he said. “A lot of people are afraid to go back into solid buildings.”
Some 1.2 million Haitians were left homeless by the Jan. 12 quake, about half of them in the capital where about a third of Haiti’s nearly 10 million people are concentrated along with the government and almost all industry.
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Last Updated ( Wednesday, 17 March 2010 )
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