Naperville students stuff boxes for tsunami victims

Students at Naperville's Bethany Lutheran School may not realize it, but they're learning an important math lesson this week.

It goes like this: If you add relatively small kids packing relatively small items into relatively small boxes, you can come up with a big project that can make a difference in the lives of others and maybe -- just maybe -- bring us all a little closer.

That, at least, is the theory behind the school's successful first semester effort to fill 100 Global Care Packages and send them to youngsters in India's southern-most state, Tamil Nadu.

Many residents there still are struggling to recover from the Dec. 26, 2004, tsunami that ripped through the Indian Ocean and devastated the region.

Leaders at the Naperville school usually tackle one or two outreach programs a year and decided this fall to focus on trying to help some of those Indian children and their families, Principal Pam Mueller said Thursday.

To do it, Bethany's 260 students were asked to provide items -- ranging from school supplies like scissors and spiral notebooks to personal items like toothbrushes and toothpaste -- that could be packaged and delivered through a nationwide program conducted by Lutheran Hour Ministries.

Families also were encouraged to donate cash to pay for the shipping fee of roughly $3 a box.

"We wanted something that was beyond our front door; we wanted something that was global," Mueller said.

In the past, Bethany's outreach programs have involved everything from providing supplies for inner-city classrooms to raising money to cover tuition for students in Sudan to attend Lutheran schools.

Mueller said faculty members thought the India effort would be a year-long project. But students and their families were surprisingly quick to respond, producing plenty of items to fill the 100 care packages and more than enough money -- $625 -- to pay for postage.

The packages likely will be shipped today, and school leaders already are thinking about tackling another project, perhaps to provide supplies for a Chicago school, during second semester.

Third-grade teacher Kirk Bolt was one of driving forces behind the India project. He said it's an ideal effort because it combines the chance to help people in need with educational elements for students.

"We could learn a little bit about boys and girls in another country, we could learn a little about their culture, and we could learn about a tsunami," he said.

Best of all, he said, it was an opportunity for students from preschool through eighth grade to know they're lending a hand to children around their own age.

Nearly every Bethany student participated in some way. Many went shopping with their families to pick out supplies and virtually everyone helped put the packages together. Younger students decorated the boxes, Mueller said, and older ones wrote letters to the recipients to tell them a little about American culture and "share the good news of Jesus Christ with them."

"At the beginning, you're just hoping everyone will be on board and interested and engaged," Bolt said.

And when that happens and you get to see the students putting the finishing touches on care packages to send to children they'll probably never meet?

"It's great," he said.