Clay's fan's help Iraqi kids

WESTBROOK - Iraqi children can't use crayons in school.

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They couldn't under Saddam and they can't now. The schools don't have air conditioning and the crayons melt.
That's one thing second-grade teacher Maureen Ramistella learned when she started an Operation Iraqi Children program at her school.
"The most interesting thing was that we had to send colored pencils," said Ramistella, who teaches at Daisy Ingraham School.
Ramistella has never visited Iraq. She doesn't consider herself very political. But when she heard about Operation Iraqi Children - a nationwide drive to send pencils, paper, notebooks and other supplies to Iraq's ramshackle schools - she jumped at the chance to help.
In mid-October, Ramistella and computer teacher Kimberly Godfrey officially launched the drive at Ingraham, soliciting donations from all grade levels. As daily fighting continues in Iraq, approximately 70 school supply kits from Ingraham will join the packages flooding in.
"I don't think this really has anything to do with war," Ramistella says. "This has to do with helping kids. I don't know how conditions have changed for Iraqi schoolchildren, but I know they're not good right now, so we need to help."
Earlier this year, actor Gary Sinise and Laura Hillenbrand, the author of "Seabiscuit," founded Operation Iraqi Children to benefit schools in the war-torn country. Since then, groups as varied as Federal Express, the Atlanta Hawks and the Clay Aiken Fan Club have joined to contribute supplies. Next to the computer room at Ingraham, a bulletin board shows Iraqi students smiling as they open their first-ever school kits.
Despite the few high-profile donors, most the charity's support has come from community groups. Ramistella first heard of the program at All Saints Church in Ivoryton, where the Sunday school had started an Iraqi drive. "I thought it would be a good idea for my classroom," she says. "Then I brought it up at an advisory meeting and everyone liked it, so we decided to do it for the whole school. We always like to do things for veterans."
The veterans, in this case, are not men and women in uniform, but rather boys and girls who have spent their lives in - as the Operation Iraqi Children Web site puts it - "sweltering one-room buildings without air conditioning, fans, windows, solid floors, or even toilets." During the 12 years of international sanctions after the Gulf War, schools throughout Iraq crumbled and lost nearly all supplies. By the time of the invasion in March 2003, most schools lacked even blackboards and books.
So Ingraham, along with other participating schools across the U.S., has been busy the last two weeks gathering and packaging supplies for Iraq's tiny classrooms. Ramistella and Godfrey assigned different items to each grade level - pencils and erasers from kindergarten, composition books from third, and so on - and requested donations of $3 to $5 from all students' families.
By the time the drive ended on Oct. 25, the school had netted about $150, which will go to purchasing additional materials. Once the packages are complete, the school will ship them to the Operation Iraqi Children headquarters in Kansas City, which in turn will distribute them to troops.
In introducing the drive to their students, the teachers tried to downplay politics. "I didn't get into the war aspect at all," says Godfrey, who works with all grades in her computer classes. "I just said there are children in Iraq who aren't as lucky as we are to have school supplies, and our soldiers are there helping them." Ramistella found that she didn't need to explain the war situation at all. "It's been so long in the news now that they're used to it," she says. "I got a lot of sympathetic looks."




©Pictorial Gazette 2004