This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon, Feb. 12, 2010 - LIn a small village four hours from Moldova's capital, where 2,000 people live and 70 percent of the men work abroad to support their families, where there's no central heat and the roads are unpaved, Martin Ellinger-Locke thought he'd have to sneak something by his students.
He was wrong. Instead, they showed him.
Ellinger-Locke, a 25-year-old St. Louis native and Peace Corps volunteer in Petrunea, heard of the earthquake in Haiti from a member of his host family, with whom he lives. He watched clips of it on the news and read about it on the internet. And when he met with his group of 6th graders one day after school, he asked if they should do something for people in Haiti.
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The students thought they should. So one day at school, they sold cookies between classes. Then they showed a Russian movie, which people in the village paid to see. They left a box in the school lobby for two weeks for donations. And they gathered the money they'd earned from creating and selling a village phone book.
Ellinger-Locke figured he'd have to add $20 of his own money so his students wouldn't feel bad with how little they'd raised.
But he didn't have to.
"In the end, they did a lot more than I thought they would," he says.
His students raised close to $75, or the equivalent of a month's wages.
"People here don't have any money," he says.
But still, they gave.
Linda Locke has visited her son in Petrunea. There are many health problems there, she says, including a poor diet and alcohol abuse.
"The village has very few resources," she says. "People are hungry."
In his time in Moldova, Ellinger-Locke wrote a grant for money that brought running water to the kitchen of his school, which didn't have it before. The after-school groups he's working with are learning how to write those grants themselves.
Back at home, Locke heard about her son's fundraiser.
"He was really proud of them," she says. "He was really pleased."
But he wasn't quite sure what to do next.
"Anyone know where my club can send money for the folks in Haiti?" Ellinger-Locke wrote on his Facebook wall in late January.
There were lots of responses, including one from his mom.
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"... 'Meds and Food for Kids' the Haiti program created by YOUR pediatrician Pat Wolff a few years ago to address malnutrition in Haiti. Glad to hear you are doing this with your students."
And so, after telling his students about the program and his former doctor, they agreed that MFK was the best place for the money they'd raised.
"It's a nice circle," his mom says, "the way everything connects."
Ellinger-Locke has already donated the money.
"This is one of the best, but by no means only, examples of people going all out," says Tom Stehl, coordinator of operations with MFK.
Ellinger-Locke, who will finish his service this summer, plans to attend grad school to study metropolitan transit planning.
He has a few months left now, though, in a small village four hours from Moldova's capitol, where cold is everywhere, where electricity comes and goes, and villagers who have little themselves gave money to help people who just might need it more.