Cold
cash from warm hearts:
St. Alphonsus students help Bosnian orphans
By Susan Brinkmann
CS&T Correspondent
The search went on for days — under chairs, between couch cushions,
on the floor of the car, in the pockets of old coats, wherever a few loose
coins might be found.
By the end of the search, after collecting and wrapping it all up, the
children of St. Alphonsus Ligouri school had collected more than 1,000
pounds of cold hard cash, which will be donated to Bosnian children who
were orphaned after the Balkan War.
The “Coin Weight and Measure for Bosnia” was sponsored by
members of the Student Council and the Saint Alphonsus Safety Organization
(SASO) and took place during Catholic Schools Week. The entire school
gathered in the parish center Jan. 31 to lay their wrapped coins on the
floor to see whose line of coins was the longest.
“We all chipped in, donating our babysitting money, our savings,”
said eighth-grade student Julia Dallas, 13. “Families would chip
in coins that were just laying around the house.”
One eighth-grade class collected 207 pounds of coins, which measured 1,332
inches when it was laid across the floor.
The total came to more than $6,338.51 — almost 1,160 pounds, and
11,540 inches of wrapped coins.
The school was introduced to the plight of Bosnian orphans when Linda
Tonelli, director of religious education (DRE) at St. Alphonsus, invited
Drew Morrisroe, 32, of St. Philip Neri parish in Lafayette Hill, to speak
at the school about his humanitarian efforts on behalf of those young
victims of war.
“He spoke to the sixth-, seventh- and eighth-grade students in October
of 2006,” Tonelli said. “He showed the children slides of
Bosnia and what happened there, including pictures of the orphanages where
there are special-needs kids that no one wants.”
Morrisroe spoke on behalf of TWI4Kids (Training Workshops International
for Kids), a small, non-profit organization dedicated to alleviating the
humanitarian crisis left in the wake of the decade-long conflict in the
Balkans that ended in 2001. He became involved with the organization through
a fellow alumnus of Philadelphia University whose parents, Mike and Bobby
Houser, founded TWI4Kids.
“The schools over there look like something out of the former Soviet
era,” said Morrisroe, who has made several trips to Bosnia since
becoming involved. “They don’t have the facilities and the
opportunities available to them they way we do over here.”
Most people are not aware of how many children and teenagers were adversely
affected by the war and left stranded in its aftermath. It is only through
volunteer organizations such as TWI4Kids that word can get out about those
young people in need.
“It’s a small, non-profit organization,” Morrisroe said.
“Everyone volunteers, so there are no people being paid salaries
and we don’t have all kinds of operating costs. Pretty much every
dollar goes directly to assisting these young people.”
A donation of just $100 can be enough to buy textbooks for students in
two grades, he said.
The students at St. Alphonsus took his message to heart, and instantly
connected with the needs of the children.
“They need books, and the kids could relate to that,” said
Linda Robbins, a kindergarten teacher at St. Alphonsus and member of the
Student Council advisory staff. “What we were trying to help them
learn is that by taking small change that sometimes means nothing to them,
they could put it toward something that means a lot to children their
age but in places where life is not quite as good.”
As excited as the children were as they laid out their wrapped coins,
they never lost sight of the meaning behind the project.
“I think the most important thing is to raise money to help the
poor,” said 8-year-old Joseph Mele, while helping his third- grade
class to line up its coins. “I don’t know how much we raised,
but I know it’s a lot … and it was really fun.”
Another third-grader, Daniel Marley, thought it was fun too, but for him,
the most important thing “is to help a charity.”
Fifth-grader Mick Barrett, 11, took a moment off from lining up coins
to say what motivated him to get involved: “I just want to help
people.”
“Children can relate to children helping children,” said Msgr.
Thomas J. Owens, pastor of St. Alphonus, while watching over the room
full of excited children. “It seems like a real compassionate thing
to do, and very concrete.”
The project was a success, said Carol Opdyke, a seventh- and eighth-grade
teacher and one of the mentors of the coin count. “This is the first
time we did this, and we weren’t sure how this would be. But the
children got so excited about it,” she said. “It turned out
to be such a wonderful school-spirit activity, with a lot of friendly
competition between the grades.
“But the children aren’t losing their focus, because Drew
Morrisroe spoke to them and they knew how important this was,” she
added. “I really think this is why they put such effort into it,
— because they’re so excited about helping the children in
the orphanages.”
The principal of the school, Sister Ruth Hennessy, R.S.M., smiled as she
watched the students return to their classrooms at the end of the event.
She was very impressed by how they had responded to the needs of others
— but not really surprised.
“That’s the hallmark of our children at St. Alphonsus,”
she said. “They respond to need. They might have a lot, but they
share it.”
For more information about TWI4Kids, visit its Web site at: www.twi4kids.org.
Contact Susan Brinkmann at fiat723@aol.com or (215) 965-4615.