News
Orphan Relief is a US Non-Profit Organization that acts as a conduit between donors and orphaned and displaced children in Japan.
We are working directly with resources on the ground. Read the latest news and watch videos of how we are making a difference NOW.
Email Orphan Relief at info@orphanrelief.net or call (615) 249-8722 to receive personal contact from a Governor of Orphan Relief concerning your tax deductible donation.
Orphan Relief working with Crane Folding Project
03/22/2011 -
In cooperation with the University of Wisconsin-Superior, the University of Minnesota-Duluth, Marshall School, Northern Lights, Duluth Edison Charter Schools, YMCA, and the Duluth and Superior Sister Cities Program, Orphan Relief is participating in the Crane Folding Project as a visible sign of the communities support for Japan.
For a donation of 50 cents, you can select a lovely piece of origami paper and learn to fold a crane. In Japanese culture, it's a custom to fold 1,000 cranes in hopes of bringing good fortune or recovery from illness or disaster. Cranes will be displayed in the UWS Yellowjacket Union.
Other locations will be announced soon and we will provide updates on Orphan Relief.
We are hopeful that cranes created and donated can be sent to Japan and distributed to children in orphanages and children's homes as a gesture of the communities love and support.
[Back to Top] [Print] [Direct Link] [Share This]
Kama Elementary School - Temporary Shlter
03/22/2011 -
Many of the children taking refuge at the Kama Elementary School, on the eastern fringes of the town of Ishinomaki, are playing in the corridors or helping their parents scrub mud-coated boots in the filthy water of the school pool.
But the atmosphere in the room on the third floor, where 30 children whose parents simply disappeared when the tsunami swept through the town, is very different.
Viewed through the window, the children sit more still and are apparently engrossed in books or card games. They are watched over by other relatives or teachers and we are not allowed to enter or speak with them. Understandably, they do not want their charges to have more reminders of the disaster that has befallen them.
Masami Hoshi was the sports teacher at the school but, since the Japanese tsunami, has been trying to get enough food for the 657 people living in the four-story school building and locate missing students and their parents. He has achieved that with a handful, but these 30 are still alone. "The tsunami came just when the parents of the middle classes were arriving to collect their children, so we managed to get them inside and to safety. The younger ones had left with their parents a little earlier," he said. "The ones who went to homes behind the school probably survived. Those who went that way" – he points across a playground coated with grey mud towards a main road littered with cars, electricity pylons and shattered glass – "probably didn't make it."
Even though the school is a mile away from the sea wall that was meant to protect Ishinomaki, the wall of water raced across the playground and into the ground floor of the building. A clear line on the wall shows just how high it reached. It is chest-high on an adult and above the heads of most of the pupils here.
"Some of the parents were sucked back out across the playground when the waters receded so we grabbed fire hoses and threw them out and dragged them all back in," said Hoshi.
The school has no electricity, heating or running water. Hoshi is waiting for food to be delivered and has no idea how long that might take.
Children's pictures are still on the walls and show images of mountains, animals and a boat on the ocean. A middle-aged woman keeps up a constant – but hear-hopeless – effort to sweep the corridors of congealed mud and debris. Futons and clothing is dried over the railings of the upper stories of the school.
Nearly 163,000 people are listed as residents of Ishinomaki. Thousands are missing and dead.
It may take many weeks to discover the fate of these children's parents and brothers and sisters, if they are ever found at all.
(Reprinted from The Telegraph)
[Back to Top] [Print] [Direct Link] [Share This]
Schoolchildren Wait But May Never See Mom and Dad Again
03/18/2011 -
Ishinomaki, Japan
Huddled under blankets in a freezing classroom, 30 Japanese schoolchildren wait patiently for their parents to arrive.
But most of these youngsters in Ishinomaki will never see their moms and dads again.
The children, aged from eight to 12, have been silently playing games since a tsunami roared through the coastal town seven days ago as parents arrived at the school to collect them.
Many adults were hit by the giant wave before they got to the school gates.
Those still in the school, which now has no heating, water and little food, are among at least 100,000 children made homeless, many of them feared to be orphans and now in crowded evacuation centres.
Exactly a week has passed since the earthquake and tsunami struck north east Japan and the official number of dead and missing is approaching 15,000.
But another 10,000 are said to have vanished in Ishinomaki alone. And experts fear the statistics are a terrible underestimate of those who perished.
Ken Joseph, an associate professor at Chiba University, is in Ishinomaki with the Japan Emergency Team, said: “I think the death toll will be closer to 100,000.”
He also pointed to food shortages and added: “We’ve had an earthquake followed by fire, then a tsunami, then radiation, and now snow. There’s nothing left. The world needs to step in. Where are the Americans?
“The Japanese are too proud to ask but we need help and we need it now.”
Rescuers hold out little hope of finding more survivors.
(Reprinted from the Daily Mirror - UK)
[Back to Top] [Print] [Direct Link] [Share This]