Winchendon Rallies For Haiti

My last entry was on January 7th. One of the reasons that I have been remiss in writing is that we have been focusing a lot of energy in other areas. Unfortunately, one of those diversions has been the massive earthquake that struck Haiti on January 12th. Since then our School has put a significant amount of time into trying to figure out how we can bring some relief to this devastated country.

Our size and culture allow us be flexible. In the first week, we developed a special one week program in which all students participated in a dialog about natural disasters. The English classes that week focused on reading, research, writing and discussion as to what causes different types of disasters, what both immediate and longer term impacts will be, and how we can respond to these situations. Classes provided a forum for helping us all process this natural disaster and others including the 2004 tsunami, the 2008 earthquake in China and the current drought in east Africa and what our role can be in these situations.

And then there are the relief efforts. By the 13th, the students had already started various fund raising efforts, and then they became more organized. At this point, almost every adviser group has submitted ideas on fund-raising initiatives, and several have already pressed into high gear. There are initiatives being worked on by small groups and larger ones as well. One of the latter occurred this past week where we he held a special dinner-dance in conjunction with our winter carnival in which $2,500 was raised towards relief efforts. Everyone had a good time for a good cause. Thanks to all that made the dinner and all of these other efforts successful.

Our near term goal is for the Winchendon School community to raise at least $10,000 in aid to help our southern neighbors. We are also investigating the possibility of sending a group of students and faculty to Haiti later this spring and have let several relief organizations know that we would welcome a couple of displaced Haitian students into the Winchendon School community. Perhaps most importantly, our students are seeing that they can have an important impact and are stepping up with their time, money and ideas as to how to help out. We don't lose site of the importance of core academic skills, but these are valuable lessons too. I am proud of how so many Winchendonians have rallied in many different ways. Thank you to all of you.