Today, hearts for haragama are excited and proud to share with you some of the fantastic help we received on behalf of Haragama Kindergarten.
Of course, while we received many monetary donations, some people came to us with offers to help in other ways. This post will be celebrating all the people who undertook some activity, or garnered some extra publicity, on behalf of hearts for haragama. Without their contributions, it is unlikely that we would have reached as far and wide as we did. Regrettably, there were times when we received offers of help and donations of such ambition and scale that we were simply unable to accommodate them. To those people we offer our apologies and thank them again for thinking of us.
The photo at the top of this post is of the Haragama students with some origami cranes, generously sent along with our very first donation from the Happy Corner Preschool in Vancouver.
One of the first offers we received was from Rhandi Uehara at the Heeia Elementary School in Hawaii, whose class of third-graders hand-made some very special pillows with messages of hope and support for the students of Haragama to use. It was a huge team effort on their part and after some delays at customs in Tokyo we were glad to finally be able to deliver the pillows to Haragama back in August. Of course, many of the students lost their possessions in the earthquake, so receiving such personalised gifts was made all the more special. Please take a look at their brand new website!
We also received some wonderful support from Rainbow Lights Ablaze, a international collective of writers and poets who came together through a common desire to help tsunami victims. In a similar vein to the well-known Quakebook, Rainbow Lights Ablaze brought together the work of a range of contributors for a book of impressions, poems and stories related to the earthquake and tsunami. They generously sent us a copy of their book so that we might pass it on to the staff and students at Haragama Kindergarten, and helped garner some much appreciated publicity for hearts for haragama. Copies of the book may be scarce at this point but we encourage all our visitors to take a look at their website, which contains some fantastic Japan-inspired photography.
Our good friend Kathy Xu, along with the help of Foo Yixuan and Teo Shihu, based in Singapore, organised a hugely successful netball tournament in conjunction with a local netball club to spread the word about hearts for haragama. Nearly sixty players took part and from all accounts it was a huge success. Kathy was a good friend of ours when she lived in Japan and undertook many other fundraising efforts in addition to her support for hearts for haragama.
Leslie Nguyen-Okwu and her students at Pflugerville High School in Texas chose to dedicate the proceeds of their fundraising efforts to hearts for haragama. Moreover, they also took the time to create this great little PSA which focussed on the human impact of the earthquake and tsunami; a point that seemed in danger of being overshadowed by all the discussion surrounding the nature of nuclear power. We thank Leslie and all the students at Pflugerville for choosing to support Haragama.
Hideaki Fukuda from Shiga Ken in Japan is an artist and maker of fine Japanese ceramics. In addition to a generous monetary donation, he also gave us a large selection of his pottery to sell, the proceeds of which all went towards hearts for haragama. Please support him by taking a look at his beautiful work at www.sohdo.com (Japanese only).
We are grateful to be able to return some of the support shown to us by our various donors by featuring them on this page. There were a small number of very special donors whose information we are unable to put on this website; of course, we would like to extend to them the same gratitude that we do all of our supporters. We hope you enjoy these photos as much as we do!
Update (1/12/2011): This post has been updated to amend a few inaccuracies and add some extra details. Additionally, there will probably be another couple of updates over the coming weeks as we collect photos of other fundraising events. Thanks!
