Wilsonville Spokesman Online

Haiti's disaster motivates Wilsonville teen

Paige Peterson creates T-shirts to raise funds for earthquake victims

• By: Josh Kulla  
• Published: 3/10/2010 10:38:14 AM

Photo By: Josh KullaStruck by disaster
Paige Peterson, a 14-year-old Wood Middle School student, designed a T-shirt to raise funds for earthquake victims in Haiti.

The devastating January earthquake in Haiti grabbed the world’s attention like few natural disasters before it.
 
Locally, a slew of fundraisers and benefit events have been held to raise money and aid for the millions of Haitians and others affected by the magnitude 7.0 quake that killed an estimated 230,000 people. These have included a Hoops for Haiti event at a Wilsonville High School basketball game, a walk-a-thon and other fundraisers.

Like many in the community, including most of the Wood Middle School student body, Wilsonville eighth-grader Paige Peterson also was captivated by the disaster as it unfolded on television and online before her. 

As she sat in the comfort of her family’s home in the Meadows neighborhood of Wilsonville, she was struck by the stark poverty of Haiti, especially after the damage inflicted by the quake and its aftershocks.

“It was sort of hard to listen to all of that stuff on the news,” Peterson said. “It made it so they really had to start over again, so I felt that I should do something. As a family who lives in a house like this, I thought I should do something.”

It didn’t take her long to settle on how to do so. After glancing at the Wood student store and seeing the various school products, she decided she would print and sell T-shirts.

“I was thinking that I wanted to do something, but I didn’t know what to do,” she said. “But then I saw our Wood (Middle School) apparel, and that’s where I got the idea.”

Immersing herself in online research, the 14-year-old found that 38 different countries had rushed aid to Haiti in the quake’s aftermath. Based on that number, a kernel of an idea for a design was planted.

“She felt very, empathetic would be the best word, about the earthquake,” said Peterson’s mother, Trish. “So she made a design and had T-shirts printed.”

The design might require a second glance, but the message quickly becomes clear upon closer inspection. While the block letters spelling out “Haiti” are hard to miss, the dozens of individual words forming a backdrop each say “hope” in each of the languages of those countries that aided Haiti.

“She researched things and found the countries who are aiding Haiti,” Trish Peterson said. “She learned in each of their languages to say ‘hope,’ and this is what outlines the word ‘Haiti.’”

Once the design was finished, Paige was on to the next step – finding someone to make the shirts. Screen printing is best left to the experienced, and fortunately, the Petersons are friends with experts in the field.

Wilsonville couple Chris and Kristin Roche and their sporting goods company, Pacific Coast Athletics, are in exactly that line of work, and were happy to help. Kristin Roche told the Spokesman the company sold the Petersons 100 shirts for Paige to use. Credit for everything else, Roche insisted, belongs to Paige.

“It’s her idea, her design, and she’s taken the initiative to do this project on her own,” Roche said. “She’s doing a pretty thoughtful thing and I thought she deserved some kudos.”

The finished shirts, in blue, lime green and Heather gray, arrived on Feb. 17.
Paige introduced them at school the next day. Barely a week later, she said, over 60 shirts had been sold for $10 each to classmates, staff and family members.

Now, she’s entirely sold out of small and medium shirts in green, and is planning a second run in red, pink and perhaps even orange.

Like earlier events, all proceeds earned from the sale of T-shirts will go to Medical Teams International.
But Paige had her own reasons for choosing the organization as the recipient of her work.

Not only does she hope to become a pediatrician in the future, she and her family also experienced the effects of a natural disaster firsthand when they were stranded in Cancun five years ago in the wake of Hurricane Wilma, a Category 5 storm that is the largest ever recorded in the Atlantic basin.

“We were in a shelter for a whole week,” Trish Peterson said.

“I remember all the devastation and it wasn’t pretty,” Paige added. “I want to be a pediatrician, and MTI sends doctors abroad, and I thought that would be something really cool to do.”

Magnitude 7.0
The Haitian earthquake was catastrophic in all respects. Its epicentre was near the town of Léogâne, approximately 16 miles west of Port-au-Prince, Haiti’s capital.

The quake struck at 4:53 p.m. local time on Tuesday, Jan. 12 By Jan. 24, at least 52 aftershocks measuring magnitude 4.5 on the Richter scale or greater had been recorded.

As of Feb. 12, an estimated three million people were affected by the quake. In addition to the dead, an estimated 300,000 people were injured, and an estimated one million made homeless. The death toll is expected to continue rising.

Over 250,000 homes were damaged or destroyed.

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