AIS Community Supports Hurricane Evacuees
As diverse as our school community can be, one thing serves time and again to unite us with each other and with the greater world around us – the passion to help those in need. From the smallest among us to those in positions of power, our community quickly pulled together to raise funds and collect supplies to help those affected by Hurricane Katrina.
Two of our parents, Tricia and Bill Hirsch, put in motion a heroic effort to collect donations of clothing, medical and first aid items, blankets, towels, toiletries and baby supplies to send to Louisiana. Bill arranged to use trucks from Fulton Paper, and AIS became a drop-off center for mountains of donations from our own and other schools, temples, churches and various charities during the first week after the storm. Students volunteered to collect donations from cars during the long Labor Day weekend, and the following week brought numerous parents to toil in the sun all day receiving, sorting, packing and labeling contributions. By the end of the week, three large tractor trailers had been filled to the brim and sent to a hospital in Gonzales, Louisiana. Please see our website at www.aischool.org for the letters received from the doctor there with details of how the donations have been used.
Our students have been busy with their own group, individual and grade level projects to raise funds to contribute to various organizations:
Grade 1 raised about $550 in their cookie sale, which will probably go to the Salvation Army. Grade 5 raised almost $600 from the cookie and lemonade sale at the AIS Family Picnic, to be given to the American Red Cross. (For more detail on the Grade 5 bake sale, see page 10.) The Grade 9 bake sale made over $200 dollars which will also go to the American Red Cross. Upper School students are also working on auctions and other fundraisers to add to the school’s contributions.
We thank all of you who have worked so selflessly to help others in their time of need. It is heartening to see evidence that AIS students, parents, faculty and staff take seriously their role as members of a global community.