Katrina’s Drive

Katrina Vale was enjoying a March Break breakfast with her family when a devastating earthquake rocked Japan.

Unlike most 14-year-olds, the St. Patrick High School freshman immediately jumped into action, eager to help people half a world away recover some sense of normalcy in the face of a tragedy that to date has killed an estimated 22,000 people.

The result was Katrina’s Drive, a web-based fundraising campaign helped in part when she contacted the city’s highest elected official for advice.

“My mom and dad always say I’m going to do something good with my life and I guess I wanted to start it now. I feel sorry for all the people who were having a fun time with their families and it was taken away by a natural disaster,” Katrina said.
 
“I’d love to save many, many people and rebuild their place.”

The youngster, who has been following the developments  in Japan in her geography class, said after asking her parents how she could help, the first place they pointed her was Mayor Keith Hobbs’s office. It seemed like a good place to start, she said.

“He’s kinda the mayor, so I thought that he would know what to do,” she said.

Mayor Keith Hobbs said it’s the only email on Japan he’s received to date, and it took him a micro-second to jump on board.

“It kind of blew me away that a Grade 9 student like this would take time out of her vacation … to think about others,” Hobbs said on Tuesday. “So we got going on this right away. This is something that was a very worthy project.”

Hobbs contacted the local branch of the Canadian Red Cross to start the ball rolling. Within days Katrina’s Drive was up and running.

“It’s going to bring money to Japan,” said Katrina, promising to donate the next few weeks to raise as much money as possible for the cause.

More than two million volunteers have mobilized through the Japanese Red Cross, and they need all the help they can get, said Robert Kilgour, the district branch manager for the charity in Thunder Bay.

It couldn’t have come at a better time, he added.

“What I see here is the perfect example that the youth have when they see those in Japan who. It doesn’t take much for them to instinctively know that we have to do something. And I think that’s one of the things that Katrina really highlights, the depths of passion and compassion that they have for people around them,” Kilgour said.

“With her coming to lead this drive I think it just really brings a focus to what’s really possible.”

To date the local Red Cross chapter has raised about $45,000, not including Internet totals, which Kilgour said could push it closer to $50,000.

To make a donation to Katrina’s Drive, visit www.redcross.ca/Katrinasdrive.