CHAPEL HILL — Students in Glenwood Elementary School’s Mandarin-English dual language program recently raised over $3,700 for victims of last month’s earthquake in China’s Sichuan province that killed nearly 70,000 people and left 5 million homeless.

Judy Ouyang, a fourth-grade teacher at Glenwood, initiated the fundraiser inspired by the fact that many who died in the earthquake were schoolchildren around her students’ age. Ouyang originally hoped to raise $2,000 to send to the Consulate-General of The People’s Republic of China in New York, which has collected approximately $2 million for earthquake relief.

The students, however, exceeded their teacher’s expectations.

The program Ouyang and her students put together for around 400 parents and friends June 5 included singing and poetry reading. It began with a narrated slide show presented by three fifth-graders entitled ‘I don’t know, but I know.’

The message was that while audience members may not have known specific facts about the disaster, they could still empathize with those affected by it.

Individual slides, compiled by Ouyang and her students, showed images of earthquake wreckage with corresponding quotes such as “I don’t know how many schools collapsed, but I know the classrooms were full of students,” and “I don’t know how deeply you know about this disaster, but I know you will be deeply shocked.”

Parents were both touched and impressed by the students and the sincerity of their presentations.

“I was moved to tears by the slide show, and by all of the kids’ presentations,” said Janet Walters, who has a fourth grade child in the program, “I was impressed with how quickly they could have such success for their cause.”

Contact correspondent Sarah Nydick Cheshire at scheshire@cfsnc.org.