Ramah juniors send prom funds to tsunami victims

By Zsombor Peter
Staff Writer

GALLUP — This year's junior prom at Ramah High School may not be as flashy as in years past, but the millions of victims of last month's tsunami half way around the globe will be that much better off for it.

It took the 30-odd juniors at Ramah High over four months to raise the $840 they were planning on spending on their end-of-the-year prom, through cake walks, fund raisers, raffles, and a spring dance; however, after the largest earthquake in 40 years shook the floor of the Indian Ocean just off the northwestern tip of Indonesia in the early hours of Dec. 26, it didn't take them long to decide to donate the money to the millions of victims of the massive waves the earthquake triggered instead.

Though the exact number of casualties may never be known, the tsunamis killed over 150,000 people in nearly a dozen countries ringing the Indian Ocean and left another five million without basic necessities, according to the United Nations World Health Organization.

"We'll have a nice dance, but we may not have a lot of decorations," said Irvin Jones, Ramah High's junior class sponsor.

The juniors decided it was a small price to pay.

"We decided to donate the money to help the people," said class president Denise Chicharello, who's been following the aftermath of the earthquake with her classmates every morning on the television news.

"It's sad. It's hard for them. They need some support," she said. "We want to show we care."

Once Jones broached the idea of donating the prom money, Chicharello said, the class took a vote and decided it would be better spent on others.

There's still a few months between now and the prom, though, and Chicharello said the juniors still plan on raising some money for themselves. Their goal at the start of the school year was $1,200.

"The students want to raise more, but they're not going to be able to raise as much as they had planned to," said Jones.

Next, he plans on asking Ramah High staff to match to students' donation.

Where exactly will the money go? Since the money is coming from the young, Jones thought it would be appropriate for the money to go to the young. The class will be donating the money to UNICEF, a branch of the United Nations that provides relief specifically to children.

Others pitching in
The Ramah High juniors certainly aren't the only ones in the area donating money to the many relief agencies that have rushed to the aid of the earthquake victims. Other schools, businesses and religious groups are also pooling their resources and calling on their patrons to help. The Navajo Nation will host a tsunami relief benefit Pow-Wow at Wingate High School Saturday.

And it's not just established institutions getting involved, either. A group of friends and acquaintances who meet at the downtown Coffee Shop decided to host a fund-raiser there during last Saturday's Arts Crawl and raised over $3,000 for a variety of relief agencies.

But with no single group orchestrating donations for the area, it's impossible to know just how much money is flowing from here to there.

One of the best-known agencies collecting donations for the relief effort is the American Red Cross, which has received $175 million worth of pledges nationwide so far. Residents in Cibola, McKinley and San Juan Counties have donated $42,000 to the agency's local chapter, according to its executive director, Lillian Rose.

"This is a phenomenal response. The community has really come out to support these victims," she said.

In her 18 years with the chapter, Rose said this was the largest outpouring of support she's ever seen following a natural disaster.

Though the Dec. 26 earthquake was not the largest natural disaster on record in terms of human casualties that infamous distinction goes to a 1976 earthquake in northern China that killed as many as 750,000 people by some estimates United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan said it would demand the world's largest relief effort, in part because it hit such a wide region of the globe, in part because the infrastructure being used to deliver that relief in much of that region is incredibly poor.

The United Nations is still assessing how much money it believes will be needed to help the victims in the long run and what it should be spent on. For its own efforts, said Rose, the Red Cross is estimating it will need $400 million for its response to the disaster, for now and for many years to come.

"Once the spotlight is gone, the work doesn't stop," she said.

For those still considering sending donations, said Rose, nothing beats money. She discourages people from sending goods.

"Logistically, in the disaster-hit areas, they can't handle the shipments," she said.

Shipping products half way around the world can also be prohibitively expensive.

By pooling monetary donations, relief agencies can spend the money more efficiently by buying the goods they need closer to where the victims are or sending them in bulk, said Rose, "getting the right things to the right locations."