Third-grader sparks international act of kindness

PALMER — How far can the ripples from one third-grader’s act of kindness reach?

If you are the indomitable Breezley Snow, 9, you won’t stop until the ripples make landfall in India.

It started with a hypothetical question posed to the third-grade Pioneer Peak Elementary student.

“What would they do with a million dollars?” the teacher asked her students.

It might have remained a hypothetical consideration if not for a subsequent conversation Snow had in Gretchen Diemer’s classroom. There the two continued the conversation about the lesson, but in terms of a thousand dollars.

What would Snow do with $1,000?

She said she would give $500 to an orphanage and with the other $500 would buy the children clothes, baby toys and a trampoline for the older children.

The what-if conversation might have ended there if not for Pioneer Peak Elementary paraprofessional Kayla Hopkins. She lived at the Mathruchhaya Foundling Home in India from the age of 2, when she was found abandoned on the streets, until she was 13.

Thursday, Hopkins said it was the luckiest and happiest day of her life when she was adopted into a large Seldovia family with four sons and three adopted daughters.

Together Snow, Diemer and Hopkins began turning the idea into an action plan to raise $1,000 for the home that helped Hopkins and countless other abandoned children since it was founded in Bangalore, India, in 1965.

Dad Dana Snow said the scope of this idea is larger than usual, but it is not at all out of the ordinary for his daughter to concern herself with the needs of others.

“She’s always thinking of others before herself,” her dad said. “Family is huge to her.”

The 9-year-old is especially fascinated by mothers and talks often about being a mom herself someday and how important mothers are.

“This project just sort of tapped into her heart,” Diemer said of her student’s international act of kindness.

She said the project has been an ideal means to teach Snow a variety of topics, including basic math, counting money, public speaking, social skills and, most of all, teamwork. That Snow is so focused on her goal also helps motivate the eager third-grader.

“When we help others, we help ourselves,” Diemer said.

How a person does big things

Still, the project is bigger than even a very single-minded third-grader can tackle solo. By working together, Diemer said she hopes to show Snow that true power lies in teamwork.

“That’s how a person does big things,” her teacher said.

To get her schoolmates involved, Snow went from class to class presenting the idea to her peers and asking them to help. So far, students have raised more than $350 in the past two weeks.

To get the community involved, Diemer contacted the Frontiersman and asked the newspaper to share the story of Breezley’s Love with readers.

Thus far, donation jars are located around the school and at the front counter in the Frontiersman business office, 5751 E. Mayflower Court, Wasilla.

Students in Snow’s class are helping as well by bringing in plastic containers and decorating them with cutout photos of children from the Mathruchhaya website. Each Breezley’s Love container reflects the international flavor of her kindness. With Hopkins’ help, the phrase “Breezley’s Love” was translated into Hindi — Breezley Ka pyara — and containers are lovingly labeled in both languages.

For Hopkins, Snow’s project also was an opportunity to reconnect with the Mathruchhaya community. Mathruchhaya means “protective shade of mother” in Hindi.

‘So dang lucky’

“What was your mom’s name?” Snow asks Hopkins.

“I don’t know,” Hopkins shrugs in reply.

She was found abandoned at the age of 2. To her, the only mom and dad she has even known are Jim and Valarie Hopkins, who adopted her as a teen.

“I think I was just so dang lucky,” Hopkins said of her family.

She said the home where she lived in India doesn’t fit the stereotypes of orphanages she learned about later in life.

“We were able to go to public school. To get educated,” Hopkins said.

She remembers the day fortune crossed her path as a 12-year-old in Bangalore.

While kids at the orphanage didn’t get to pick their adoptive families, Hopkins said fate smiled on her that day.

The first photo she was shown pictured just a grandmother and a child, which didn’t match Hopkins’ idea of what her family would look like. For herself, she wanted a big family with a mother, father and lots of siblings, she said.

Out of the corner of her eye that day, young Hopkins saw another family photo, this one brimming with smiling boys, a mother and a father.

The woman placing her for adoption noticed her sidelong glance and fished out the photo that had caught the child’s eye.

“You know this family is looking for a girl to adopt about your age,” she told Hopkins.

At first she wrote weekly letters and called back to Mathruchhaya from time to time. But eventually her new life in Alaska overshadowed her ties to her old life in India and she lost touch. Snow’s project has been a chance to reconnect, she said.

“It’s mind-blowing what she is doing,” Hopkins said. “To see her at her age focus so much on the needs of others, I’ve never seen that in my life. This project is well beyond her years.”

Dollars to rupees

Ideally, Diemer said she hopes Breezley’s Love grows large enough that Snow and Hopkins can fly to India to deliver the check to the children at Mathruchhaya in person.

“Everywhere we turn, people donate,” the teacher said, including at her recent birthday party when one friend gave a $20 gift in her name to Breezley’s Love.

Because of the current exchange rate between American dollars and the Indian rupee, the $1,000 gift Snow hopes to give will be a big help to Mathruchhaya, Hopkins said.

Currently, $1 equals about 62 Indian rupees. So, that $1,000 U.S. really equals about 62,000 rupees.

For more information or to request a collection jar, call 315-2092 or 861-5700.

Contact Heather A. Resz at 352-2268 or heather.resz@frontiersman.com.