TORONTO — When a Grade 12 world issues class was told to “make a difference in the world,” one group of students decided to send aid to an orphanage in Haiti.
From left are Westmount Collegiate Institute teacher Neil Orlowsky and students Brandon Schwartz, Ashley Cooper, Alyssa Ross, Adam Desai, Jake Newton, Harley Kizner and Corey Tuschak with supplies from dental kits that they sent to Haiti.
Alyssa Ross, Ashley Cooper, Brandon Schwartz, Corey Tuschak, Harley Kizner, Jake Newton, Adam Desai and April Mandaliti, all students at Westmount Collegiate Institute in Thornhill, Ont., recently sent 187 dental kits to Haiti’s HIS Home for Children.
“As a group we decided that we wanted to help an orphanage in Haiti, as they have been through a lot.” Ross said. “We knew that Port-Au-Prince has been greatly affected so we wanted to find an orphanage in that area. We started looking online to find different orphanages and [HIS Home] stood out. We felt that these young children could really use our help.”
The students raised money by holding a bake sale at their school, with cupcakes donated by The Cupcake Shoppe.
“We raised $228, which was way more than we expected to raise,” Ross said. “We only needed $110 to send the kits to Haiti, so we decided to give the rest of the money to the Daily Bread Food Bank.”
Each dental kit contains two tubes of toothpaste, a toothbrush and a case of dental floss, donated by Colgate and Crest. Each kit also has a Canadian flag and sticker, donated by Thornhill MP Peter Kent.
The HIS Home currently houses 125 orphans, but Ross and her group sent 187 kits because “we felt that we should give some extras,” Ross said.
UPS Canada sent the kits from Toronto to Florida free of charge, and the group used money raised from their bake sale to forward them on to Haiti.
The group chose to do something for Haiti to keep attention on the plight of the people there, Ross said.
“We felt that once the media stopped educating the community about what is going on in Haiti, people stopped caring [as much].”
For more information on the HIS Home for Children, visit www.hishomeforchildren.com.
