Last month’s horrific earthquake in Haiti has triggered a rush of generosity from the Humble Independent School District.

Superintendent Guy Sconzo set a fundraising goal of $35,000, about a dollar per student. As of Thursday afternoon, the district had collected more than $47,500, with many efforts ongoing.

Atascocita High School acted quickly under the leadership of senior Aaron Gomez and his service fraternity, Lambda Xi.

A week after the Tuesday quake, school clubs had ordered T-shirts and wristbands with student-designed logos. A slick video Gomez made was shown across the school.

“I’ve got this crazy bunch of seniors — it’s usually bedlam in the room,” said teacher Wyatt Bingham. “When they played the video I figured I was going to get about three seconds of attention. I got complete silence.”

The video featured photos of the devastation, and it ended with a list of stylized verbs, beginning with “iCry, iStarve, iCope,” and ending with “iSupport.” Gomez, who plans to major in business at college, said the catchy, iconic branding was deliberate.

It worked.

As of last week, just 22 of the 600 “iSupport Haiti” shirts, which sell for $10, remained.

To spur interest while the shirts were printed, teacher Gaby Diaz suggested iCompete 4 Haiti, a battle among the school’s four “houses” to raise cash each day at lunch.

Sophomore Drew Carr emptied his family’s spare change — about $100 worth of coins — into a protein-powder bucket and lugged that in. One girl asked for her year’s allowance up front and donated the full $120.

“It wasn’t just, ‘Oh, here’s 10 bucks, I guess I’ll donate,’” Carr said. “People really did care.”

Gomez said he never expected the effort to spread so widely, but now hopes to extend it to other schools in the district.

“It’s great to see that students can take their minds off little things that we stress about like clothes and grades and put that aside to care about something that actually matters,” he said.

Willow Creek Elementary, at 550 kids, bears little resemblance to 3,200-student Atascocita High, but the pupils there showed a similar desire to help.
The school raised $10,700 in fundraising that ended Feb. 12.

Special education teacher Oliver Durkan offered to shave his head if the school hit its in-house $6,000 goal. The kids blew past that in days, so staff member Keith Godfrey tossed his hair in the ring, too, and was buzzed clean after the school hit $10,000.

“I needed a haircut,” Durkan said, chuckling. “And taking things to the extreme is always fun.”

Fourth-grader Anje Potgieter, who gave $50, earned her 15 minutes of fame by being chosen to shave Durkan’s head.

For $20, kids could get a Haiti T-shirt and earn days on which they could break school rules by wearing a hat, pajama bottoms and crazy hair. Many students also brought in their piggy banks and birthday money.

“We serve an affluent community,” Principal Debbie Roesler said, “but these people have really taught their kids to share, and they share willingly.”

Hannah Sims was the first to bring in her birthday money, having saved it since she turned 7 last July.

“I knew they needed it more than me,” she said. “I think it’s wonderful that we raised that much dollars.”

Roesler said explaining the disaster required glossing over the saddest details, but she said the kids learned lessons all the same.

“The best thing they could learn is we are not alone in the world,” she said. “They really could make that connection: someone else in the world was hurting.”