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Local groups still trying to aid Haiti

First-grade students in Cindy Firman's class at Emmanuel Christian Academy sort through clothes donated for the older students' mission trip to Haiti. Staff photos by Bill Lackey

Bill Lackey First-grade students in Cindy Firman's class at Emmanuel Christian Academy sort through clothes donated for the older students' mission trip to Haiti. Staff photos by Bill Lackey

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Photos: Earthquakes in Haiti

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Students at Emmanuel Christian Academy (from left) Noah Briggs, Ashley Oren, Isaiah Bragg, Kimberly Walls and Jenna Friece hold up the flip-flop sandles they are collecting for their mission trip to Haiti.

Bill Lackey Students at Emmanuel Christian Academy (from left) Noah Briggs, Ashley Oren, Isaiah Bragg, Kimberly Walls and Jenna Friece hold up the flip-flop sandles they are collecting for their mission trip to Haiti.

Emmanuel students help homeless, Haitian refugees

By Megan Gildow, Staff Writer Updated 7:53 AM Friday, March 12, 2010

SPRINGFIELD — An Emmanuel Christian Academy classroom will win a special field trip in a contest at the school this week, but the real winners will be disadvantaged people living in Washington D.C. and Haiti who will benefit from the school’s service.

Emmanuel’s students are participating in a “Contest of Giving,” which ends today, to collect supplies that some pupils will be distributing during mission and outreach efforts at the end of this month, said teacher Annette Bragg, wife of Superintendent Dan Bragg.

This year all of the school’s students will spend a week in March doing service locally, taking a special course at the school or job shadowing someone in the community as part of Enrichment Service and Ministry, she said.

Eighth grade students will take their traditional Washington D.C. trip, where they will visit historical and politically-important sites but have added a mission component of taking toiletries and volunteering to a homeless shelter.

A second mission trip of 17 high school students will visit the Dominican Republic, a trip planned since fall but given new meaning after the devastating earthquake in Haiti Jan. 12.

“These are the poorest of the poor in the Dominican Republic because they’re refugees of Haiti,” said Bragg.

Students will take new flip-flops and gently-used clothes to Haiti and will work with a local school-church-goat farm complex to provide opportunities for people to “earn” the donations.

“We are giving them things that they need but because it’s something that they work for, it’s not like a gift anymore,” she said, adding that the component of earning the clothes and shoes makes it more meaningful.

Teens in the arts-based youth outreach arm of Clark State Community College Performing Arts Center, Project Jericho, will spend the week of March 21 sewing 400 school bags for students who have been displaced by the January earthquake in Haiti.

The bags will be filled with school supplies donated by the general public, said Community Outreach and Education Specialist Sarah Leavens.

Project Jericho is working with the national missions organization UMCOR on sending the bags to the children.

Contact this reporter at (937) 328-0373 or mgildow@coxohio.com.

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