Schools

School No. 3 Raises More Than $11,000 for Japan Disaster Relief, Enrolls Displaced Japanese Student

Students donated a dollar each—or in many cases much more—as part of Helping Hands project. One local family took guardianship of a relative, who is now attending School No. 3.

Students at Fort Lee School No. 3 have raised $11,257, all of which is being donated to the Japanese Red Cross, through the school’s “Helping Hands” project, said Fort Lee Superintendent of Schools Raymond Bandlow. 

“This outpouring of generosity and compassion across the ocean shows our community at its best,” Bandlow said. “It’s pretty impressive. That’s a very, very successful fundraiser to put together, and a lot of people participated in that.”

In return for a small donation—the school was asking for a dollar from each student, Bandlow said, but many people donated much more than that—students could color or decorate a paper hand to be hung on the school’s walls.

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“Students [draw, color or otherwise decorate] a hand, representing the helping hands, which is a great expression of what it’s all about,” Bandlow said. “All up and down the halls, all over the school, you see paper cutouts of hands. [The students] draw something on them. They do something to personalize it along with their donation, so then you see all these helping hands all over the school. It’s really very dramatic.”

School No. 3 Principal Robert Kravitz said the Jewish Community Center of Fort Lee donated $2,250 of the more than $11,000 raised, and that $3,000 of the total was raised through a bake sale at the school and a garage sale organized by the Japanese Parents Association.

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Kravitz gave much of the credit for organizing the Helping Hands project and “putting in a lot of the hard work” to two teachers at the school, Sandi Klein and Carol Kuchar.

The same Fort Lee elementary school is doing its part to help in another way in the wake of the disaster in Japan, which has been devastated by earthquakes, a tsunami and a nuclear catastrophe in recent weeks, taking in a refugee from the disaster, according to Bandlow.

“We wanted to let the Fort Lee community know that we’re taking good care of a student who came to us under these circumstances,” Bandlow said, noting that he can’t say much about the family without their permission.

He would say however that a Fort Lee “family member has taken guardianship of the student as a result of the family being displaced.”

“A young Japanese child, like many whose family was displaced in the devastation that ensued from Tsunami, earthquakes, and nuclear melt-down, has come to Fort Lee under the guardianship of relatives,” Bandlow said in a previous statement. “We in the schools will do all we can to provide the emotional as well as educational support this child needs.”


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