T-Shirts For Haiti

To the Editor:

My name is Julia DiMartino. I am 9 years old, and I go to The Fraser- Woods School. My brother and I are working with the Where to Turn organization at www.where-to-turn.org. Where to Turn is an organization that helps different crises. For example, the 911 terrorist attack. They are now helping Haiti by collecting gently used T-shirts. The original goal for organization was to collect 10,000 T-shirts, but now the goal is 25,000 T-shirts, because he went past his goal. Right now he has about 27,000 T-shirts.  Schools all over the tri-state area are setting up T-shirt drives. My brother, Tyler, and I set up a T-shirt drive at our school, which contained many steps.

The first step was that we had to meet with our principal and ask her if it was ok that we set up the drive. She said that setting up the shirt drive was ok, but she had some questions that only the man that started the organization could answer, like when will they deliver the shirts, and how will they get them to Haiti? So I called the man and I told him my principal’s questions. He said that they would get to Haiti in the middle of March; he also said that he would get some military assistance to drop the T-shirts off in Haiti. Then I went to my principal again, and I told her the answers and she said that doing the drive was ok.

When my principal said it was ok, we made an email that talked about what the shirt drive was about, and sent it to the families of the school. That was really fun! It was really funny getting my own email by mistake.

The third step was getting the box, and decorating them. This is the fun part of all of the steps. So we got the box and I decorated it. When I painted it, I painted the words that said “T-shirt drive for Haiti.” It also had a huge T-shirt on it. It was fun making the box!

When I brought the box in that morning three people in my class were already waiting for me! By the end of the day the box was already overflowing. The next day we came with a couple of garbage bags to collect the shirts. Right now we have five garbage bags full with shirts! We have at least 350 shirts already! We have had a huge success! The T-shirt drive will be going until the beginning of March. If you would like to donate any gently used T-shirts please email Tyler and me at dimartino@charter.net .

 Julia DiMartino

Fraser-Woods School

173 South Main Street, Newtown                         February 24, 2010