By Lisa Benoit

With a special second collection at Masses this past weekend, parishes throughout the Diocese of Honolulu joined the massive global effort to aid the millions of victims of the Dec. 26 earthquake and tsunami in Asia and Africa.

The money collected will be sent to the region through Catholic Relief Services (CRS), the U.S. Catholic international aid organization.

According to Carol Ignacio, CRS’s local representative, all parishes were asked to insert CRS emergency fact sheets and donation instructions in their Sunday bulletins.

“It is such a terrible disaster,” said Ignacio, who is also the director of the diocesan Office for Social Ministry. “We have nothing to compare it to in our particular lifetime.”

“It is important that all of us feel the common call of humanity to help one another,” she said.

Within a few days of the disaster which has killed more than 150,000 people in 10 countries surrounding the Indian Ocean and left millions homeless, CRS had committed $25 million from the U.S. Catholic community to provide clean water, food, shelter and immediate healthcare and longer term rehabilitation programs.

The organization’s pledge was one of the largest initial responses for emergency assistance to the disaster.

CRS already has operations in the countries affected and local partners immediately mobilized to the hardest hit areas of India, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Indonesia. Their primary contribution has been in providing shelter, sanitation and access to potable water. In Indonesia, the Catholic agency delivered hundreds of family kits consisting of kitchen utensils, blankets, etc.

“We are going to continually update people and keep them abreast,” Ignacio said.

She added that CRS is not collecting clothes or material goods. The agency, and most aid organizations, prefers money with which they can purchase and transport needed supplies locally.

Ignacio said that a similar recent weekend Mass appeal in the diocese raised more than $35,000 for the thousands of people in Sudan displaced by civil war.

“I am hoping people will be very generous and have some sense of assurance that we are working through the Catholic Church,” she said. “Catholic Relief Services is very credible.”

She encouraged those who want to see the efforts of CRS to visit its website, www.catholicrelief.org.

Schools collecting money

Many Hawaii Catholic schools, just returning from Christmas breaks last week, have started mobilizing tsunami relief efforts of their own.

Monica Des Jarlais, principal of Holy Trinity School, Kuliouou, said that her school will have bake sales after the weekend Masses for two weeks in January with all the proceeds going to the disaster relief.

The fifth through eighth grade students baked and sold goods last weekend; the lower grades will do the same this weekend.

Des Jarlais said the bake sales fit into the school’s social justice issue for the year, “Work — the right of workers.”

“We didn’t want to respond just in a way that students would go and ask their parents for the money,” she said. “We wanted them to work for it. We wanted to empower them in that way.”

Des Jarlais said that she hopes to raise at least $250 for Catholic Relief Services.

Maryknoll High School in Honolulu will donate to CRS from their Penny Pot, a weekly student social ministry collection. Maryknoll Grade School is taking up a student collection. Their goal is to raise at least the equivalent of $1 per student, or about $1,400.

At St. Ann’s Grade School in Kaneohe, first grader Theresa Dao placed a card with the 50 cents of her breakfast money in the collection basket after the disaster. The card was a photocopy of one she had sent along with her parents’ donation to the Red Cross. The letter read, “Hello, my name is Theresa Dao, I am six years old, I would like to help the children of the tsunami disaster with my little savings from my breakfast. May God bless them all.”

According to St. Ann’s parish director of education, Sacred Hearts Sister Anne Clare De Costa, all the students in the school, the early learning center, the religious education program and youth ministry will donate to the cause. The pastor, Sacred Hearts Father Clarence Guerreiro, has pledged $5,000 of parish funds.

Said Sister Anne Clare, “This letter from our little first grader shows that people are innately good and will respond almost immediately to any type of need. It is our job to nurture it, support it and encourage it.”

St. Anthony School, Kalihi, will donate both the collections from their January First Friday school Mass and the second Sunday of January family Mass to CRS.

Diane Donnelly’s kindergarten class at St. John Vianney School, Kailua, will give CRS the money the class had been collecting for the past 100 days.

“We have a big piggy bank and we are going to crack it open next week,” Donnelly said.

The 18 kindergarteners had been asked drop a penny a day for 100 days into the piggy bank, so they could learn about community service and also how to count pennies and put them in rolls.

Donnelly said that the students were very enthusiastic about the project and many brought in much more than their one-cent-per-day.

“One little boy got five dollars for his birthday and his mother said he was excited to come in and donate it,” she said. “A lot of the kids just got excited and started bringing in more money.”

‘Hope comes from us’

At St. Patrick School in Kaimuki, students are being asked to bring in 75 cents each in celebration of the school’s 75th anniversary. Teachers are being asked to match the amount that the students donate.

The principal, Sister of St. Joseph of Carondelet Rose Miriam Schillinger, hopes to raise about $500.

“For the ones who lost their lives, it is done, but for the people remaining, there is still much pain and suffering,” she said. “The hope has to come from us. They are ones that really need the extra support and the prayers we can give them.”

Sister Rose Miriam hopes the fund-raising effort will teach students to “be thankful for whatever God has given them” and to help them to “reach out to others in need, not only when there is a disaster.”

Sacred Hearts Academy principal Betty White said that the school will formulate a school-wide project to raise funds for CRS.

“Our girls are so touched by the suffering and want to jump in immediately with a variety of measures that may bring relief,” White said. “However, the Academy is encouraging the students to work as a whole and decide how best their efforts and resources can be used to have the most impact.”

Christ the King School in Kahului will have a Tsunami Cents/Sense Program, Jan. 10 through April 8.

“The ‘sense’ part instills in the children that a tsunami can affect us and has in the past,” said the principal Bernadette San Nicolas.

The program will continue 50 days and through Lent in honor of the school’s upcoming 50th anniversary.

“We want to capitalize on teaching students about service to community,” San Nicolas said.

She said that the older students will use technology for instructional lessons to learn how tsunamis affect the world.

St. Louis School, Kaimuki, is working on several projects. One is a collection program for bottles and cans to be redeemed for cash for the tsunami relief.

St. Joseph School, Waipahu, will collect money and sell ice pops and rice crispy bars at lunchtime through January, with profits going to CRS.

St. Anthony Grade School, Wailuku, will hold a penny drive, the proceeds of which will be delivered to Phuket, Thailand, by a parent who is going there Jan. 19. At St. Anthony High School, Wailuku, the student government is organizing a fund raising activity.

In Kailua, Oahu, the St. Anthony School student council is organizing a tsunami relief project for the pre-school through eighth classes. St. John the Baptist School, Kalihi, will collect money in class for the relief effort. St. Joseph School, Hilo, will also collect student donations for CRS.

We are one human family

According to Ignacio, the need in the areas affected by the earthquake and tsunami will be ongoing and last for many years as homes, livelihoods and communities are rebuilt.

“The whole thing is about caring for our brothers and sisters,” she said. “That is what solidarity means in life terms. We are all one human family. Many of us cannot go over there and be there physically, but we can be there in solidarity. Our faith calls us to do that.”

Send donations to Catholic Relief Services, c/o Office of Social Ministry, 140 B. Holomua St., Hilo, HI 96720. Make the check out to Catholic Relief Services and memo it “Tsunami Emergency.”

For more information, call Carol Ignacio at 808-935-3050.