Advent challenge for Haiti: help collect school supplies

During the Advent season, Canadian Lutheran World Relief (CLWR) is challenging Lutheran congregations, groups, schools and Sunday schools across Canada to help meet an urgent need for school supplies in Haiti.

Relief partners in Haiti have assisted with the construction of schools to replace those destroyed by last January’s earthquake. This work is supported in part by the generous response the Canadian Lutheran community made to an emergency appeal from CLWR.

With your help, many students have returned to the classroom, but there is a desperate shortage of supplies we often take for granted—notebooks, rulers, pencils and crayons.

CLWR Executive Director Robert Granke discusses the needs of students with staff. The plywood building replaces a school destroyed in the January earthquake.

CLWR has set a target of providing 3,500 We Care school packs to its Lutheran partners in Haiti as part of a special shipment scheduled to leave Winnipeg early in 2011. In addition, the development and relief organization is making a special request for soccer balls (and hand pumps) for use during school recreation breaks.

In cooperation with Haiti Lutheran Mission Society, a portion of the bags collected by CLWR will go to students in the schools of the Lutheran Church of Haiti.

“I think our LCC people will embrace this challenge,” remarked Lutheran Church–Canada’s mission executive Rev. Dr. Leonardo Neitzel. “I was in Haiti earlier this month and have seen for myself the need and also the deep gratitude of the people for all the help Lutheran agencies are providing.” He said that helping collect school supplies in We Care kits is “a wonderful response to the love God has shown us through Jesus Christ.”

We Care school packs include a cloth bag (ordered from CLWR) and participants donate three notebooks (approximately 8″x10″—20.3 x 25.4 cm); one metric ruler (30 cm); one pencil sharpener, one eraser; six unsharpened pencils with erasers and one pack of 12 or 16 pencil crayons. The program is described on CLWR’s website or call 1-800-661-2597 or e-mail clwr@clwr.mb.ca.

To meet the shipment deadline, all kits should be dropped off at any Home Hardware store by December 15. (To conserve space, deflate the soccer balls before packing.) Home Hardware provides no-charge shipping to Winnipeg so, when dropping off kits, please express your appreciation to the management and staff for this wonderful gift.

CLWR staff will also bale and pack about 5,000 quilts and blankets already in the organization’s warehouse inventory to send with the We Care kits in a 40-foot container.

To learn more about the work in Haiti carried out by CLWR’s partners, please visit http://clwr.wordpress.com/.

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