From One Island to Another: From Elm Street with love

CAPTION:  Marlene Dorey, left, accepts a cheque from Brett Gallant, centre and Garrett Reid, right, on behalf of Elm Street Elementary School for the Red Cross to help in Japan on Thursday afternoon at Elm Street Elementary in Summerside.

Elm Street Elementary School donates cheque to Red Cross Japan effort

By Ryan Quigley

Journal Pioneer

Warren Burrell, grade six teacher at Elm Street elementary, lived in Yokohama, Japan where he taught for six and a half years, before moving here in January.

His wife, Asami Burrell, grew up there and her parents still lived there, about 800 kilometres from the area most devastated when the tsunami shook Japan, leaving it in the tragic circumstances that it still struggles with today.

“My parents in-law’s house shook pretty good during the earthquake.”

After news came of the predicament Japan was in, Burrell and his grade six class began organizing a donation drive for the whole school to participate in.

After months of selling candy grams, recycling bottles, collecting donations at a Summerside Western Capital’s game, collecting donations from businesses and from a bake sale held by Elizabeth Trenholm, they presented the donation to Marlene Dorey, Fund Development Association with the Red Cross, in the amount of $1610.

“It just warms my heart and I really feel our young people are our future and for them to work so hard to help people across the world is just absolutely inspiring,” said Dorey.

She said the she was surprised when she was told how much the school was able to donate.

“It’s overwhelming,” she said. “I think they have raised a significant amount. It takes your breath away to come here today and see the students, hear the thought they put into this presentation.”

Two students who worked on the project, Garrett Reid and Brett Gallant, said they were very proud of the effort the class put in.

“We just wanted to raise some money and help them out,” Reid said. “It feels good helping out everyone else.”

“It feels really good because we got to help people out on the other side of the planet that we didn’t know that were affected by this,” said Gallant.

During the ceremony a letter was read from Burrell’s father in-law, Yasunori Yamamoto, thanking the students for their efforts. Burrell said his father in-law was happy to hear about the initiative.

“He’s not totally surprised we were able to do this. He was surprised it was led by the kids,” said Burrell. “When he heard the amount of community involvement there was he was pretty emotional about and that reflected in his speech today.”

Burrell said he was impressed with the amount of support they recieved from businesses’ and the community.

“Overall I’m just extremely appreciative that everyone put their energies together to make this work.”

Burrell said he was very proud of his class and the school’s efforts.

“It was easy to get them on board, to buy in to what we needed and they were very interested in taking ownership and doing this themselves,” he said. “Someday this world is going to be there’s, so it’s better at a young age to get them to take on that responsibility.”