Wayland students help Haitians

WAYLAND -- Viraj Vora sees the connection.

''When you play sports, you work with a team," he said. ''This experience, where you're working with almost 25 other people in your class, is similar."

Vora and fellow junior Elizabeth Bleuer are helping to start a fund-raising campaign called Helping Hands for Haiti. The campaign, part of a modern history class at Wayland High, has raised more than $5,000 to promote better healthcare in that country.

While Vora is a member of Wayland's spring volleyball team and Bleuer plays soccer in the fall, they have experienced a different type of victory in the campaign.

''Everyone has put so much time and effort into it," Bleuer said. ''We had different fund-raisers, and everyone was always there for them and so excited to do it. They worked so hard."

Both Vora and Bleuer say the teamwork that has gone into Helping Hands for Haiti is much like what they strive for in the athletic arena.

The campaign has been a marathon, with the work starting in March, when Vora and Bleuer were both sophomores. Their class, led by teacher Dan Gavin, was studying human rights. Each student picked a human rights topic that stoked their passion and wrote a term paper on that subject.

The class then split into groups to discuss each student's work and ultimately determine what area to pursue for one large project.

Some of the ideas were jotted on the blackboard, and the class, after discussing the merits of each subject, decided on Haiti for its one large group project.

Bleuer ''was really passionate about Haiti" after meeting Magda Dieuseu -- who runs a health clinic in Haiti -- at her local church. Helping Hands for Haiti was the type of idea teachers hoped the students would pursue, because the problems in Haiti haven't often been featured in newspapers or on television newscasts.

''We tried to stay away from something that was already being looked at, and wanted to bring awareness to issues that people hadn't been thinking about," said David Gavron, who took over Gavin's class this fall.

''The class decided on Haiti, and basically I just tried to stay out of their way. It's absolutely amazing what happened, and something which I take no credit for. I am there to be an adult presence and that's it. They are the ones who were contacting people for donations, coming up with ideas on how to get information disseminated to the public, and what they would do with the money.

''They're making my job easy, because I don't even have to give an idea," Gavron said. ''They just run with it."

''Helping Hands for Haiti" has its own website, (wayland.k12.ma.us/high_school/haiti_healthcare/index), which explains ''in the 17th century, Haiti was one of the world's most prosperous and thriving colonies" but is now poverty-stricken.

Haiti (population 8.1 million) is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, with 80 percent of the population living in poverty, according to the site.

The group's original goal was to raise $2,000. It has smashed that mark, and contributions are still coming from everybody from the school's athletic director (Martha Jamieson) to its football coach (Scott Parseghian) to local businesses. The main fund-raising events were two bake sales, a car wash, a ''mat ball" tournament, and a 24-hour walk at the high school.

''It's really important to talk about the group," Bleuer said. ''We stood in front of the class and talked, but everyone is so involved. There is a budget team, a website team, a spokespeople team. Everyone in the class is a big part of it."

Said Vora: ''You have a lot of people with responsibility. It's similar to sports, but at the same time, you're helping out other people. That's the nice part of it."

Vora said the experience has been one of his ''personal highlights of the year."

''It was one of the first times I've worked on a project on such a large-scale basis," he said.

''Sending money over to a different country, helping people in a different country, that was all pretty new to me. I had done community service around here, helping in an [elderly-care facility]. But this was a bigger magnitude, more intense. It was really amazing."