Valley helps 9-year-old raise $1,400 for orphans in India

PALMER — What started as a lesson in a Valley classroom two months ago has blossomed into a community project to help orphans in India.

If you shop at Three Bears Grocery, Fireside Books or any of a couple dozen other local stores, you may have tucked a few folded bills or dribbled a handful of coins into donation jars for “Breezley’s Love.”

It was Pioneer Peak Elementary teacher Gretchen Diemer’s 9-year-old student Breezley Snow who got the ball rolling.

After a third-grade lesson that asked students to think about what they would do with a million dollars, Diemer and Snow took the lesson a step farther.

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.

As fate would have it, Pioneer Peak Elementary paraprofessional Kayla Hopkins was raised at the Mathruchhaya Foundling Home in India from the age of 2 to 13. So Snow, Diemer enlisted her help tackle the task to raise $1,000 for the home founded in Bangalore, India, in 1965.

When the Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman printed their story Feb. 28, students had collected $350 toward their goal. Since the community joined the effort, that figure has increased considerably, Diemer said Wednesday.

Snow said so far the community has donated $1,400 to “Breezley’s Love.”

That’s a lot of money, but converted to rupees, it’s enough money to really help, Hopkins said. At current conversion rates, $1 equals 60.29 Indian Rupee. So, that $1,400 equals about $84,000.

“That will go a long, long way in India,” Hopkins said.

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

Diemer said it’s been amazing to watch the ripples from Breezley’s Love spread across the Valley and around the world.

“I’m amazed to see this just grow and grow and grow,” she said.

The Denali Destroyer Dolls got involved when Erika Bills, who skates for the Dolls and works at Northrim Bank, was asked to set up a bank account to hold the donations. Teammate Sheri Dundas knew about the project because her daughter also is in Diemer’s class.

So the two Pioneer Peak moms came up with their own way to show love for Breezley’s project: they invited her to come to their game on Saturday at the MTA Events Center and pass the skate.

Bills said normally the team collects donations for the Mat-Su Food Bank, but wanted to do something special to help with this project.

“Her story was pretty unique,” Dundas said. “We like to support the community.”

Diemer said some of the ripples carried Alaskans to the doors of Mathruchhaya Foundling Home.

Facebook prompted that connection.

Classroom assistant Mary Swisher said she saw a friend from Kotzebue post a note on Facebook saying he’d arrived safely in India. When she saw the post, she said she sent him a private message with a link to the Breezley’s Love story on frontiersman.com.

Swisher also asked her friend Ian Erlich to stop by the orphanage and take some photos while he was in Bangalore. He said he would.

And on the last day of his trip, Swisher said Erlich and his business partners visited the orphanage and were touched by what they saw.

All of the children in the orphanage’s care were abandoned by their parents, Hopkins said. She came to the home as a 2 year old, abandoned on the streets of Bangalore, India.

Swisher said Erlich was brought to tears by the sight of a room full of newborn babies that had been abandoned. She said he is a father and was overwhelmed at the sight.

The men said the experience moved them all to start helping fund the orphanage’s efforts.

“That was a ripple effect,” Swisher said. “God works in mysterious ways.”

Diemer said the serendipitous nature of Erlich’s trip was amazing.

“That Breezley’s wish to contribute to children in need, delivered its message, through a person in our classroom, to the desks of Mathruchhaya’s neighbors, seems truly in the realm of “meant to be,” she said. “Once again, we are struck with how one person’s efforts can have far-reaching effects.”

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