Two Palo Alto High School sophomores are creating an effective and convenient way for students to help Japanese natural disaster victims by selling T-shirts for $15.
Sophomores Yoko Kanai and Jacqueline Woo, who organized the fundraiser, are selling custom T-shirts with a red wave symbol in the middle to represent the Japanese flag.
“We’re trying to raise money to help tsunami victims,” Kanai said.
Kanai has previously made similar shirts, which sparked her idea to sell them for donations.
“I had a T-shirt with a red dot on it and that was supposed to be the Japanese flag and a lot of people asked me to make one for them so I was like ‘Oh, I could sell these,’” Kanai explained.
The design was modified to connect the idea of the disaster to the shirt, Woo said.
The sophomores will donate the money raised from the sales to Global Giving, according to Woo.
“They [Global Giving] have emergency response, so we wanted to donate to that,” Woo said.
The majority of the information and communication is through the Facebook event page, but confirmations must be made in person, according to Kanai.
“Spreading awareness about the event is through Facebook, but we are all taking orders in person because we need to collect the money before we order shirts,” Kanai said.
Though they have several requests on the Facebook event page, they still have not received many payments.
“We have over 200 requests [on Facebook], but we don’t record them unless they pay,” Woo said.
The deadline for ordering is March 20 and the shirts will be available by March 30 at the latest, according to Woo. More information about ordering and the design of the shirts can be found on the event page on Facebook.
Editor’s note: A previous version of this story implied that the T-shirts were handmade, but in fact they are custom designed and printed by a company. The current version of the story reflects this correction.