A North Yarmouth Academy senior is raising funds to help pay the cost of shipping 150 pounds of clothing to an orphanage in Vietnam.

After seeing widespread poverty there during a class trip last March, Marina Stam returned to her Cumberland Foreside home determined to do something to help the children she saw there, particularly those in orphanages.

“It was an eye-opening experience for me,” said Stam, 17. At one orphanage they visited, Stam noticed that the young children carefully ate every scrap of food during a lunch with the students.

“It made me realize how easily I throw away a half bagel at school, but I could see how differently things are valued there,” said Stam.

She held a clothing drive at her school, eventually collecting 150 pounds of clothing and shipping it off to an orphanage. But it cost $1,850 to send, and even after the local UPS Store owners donated $1,000, Stam’s mother had to cover the remaining $850 in shipping costs.

Now Stam and administrators at the private PreK-12 school are working to raise funds to pay the shipping fees.

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A local photographer, Fred Field, has donated pictures he took during the students’ trip for a school fundraiser, charging between $7 and $25 for prints, and the school posted the photos on its website to spur sales.

Field said Tuesday that the effort had raised about $100 in the first few days. He said there are about 158 photos for sale, and all the profits will go to the fundraiser.

Stam said she also hopes to raise money through a school “dress down” day this spring, when the school allows students to dress casually for the day in exchange for $2 or $3 toward a specific charitable cause.

Stam sent the clothing to an orphanage run by Que Huong Charity Center. According to Guidestar, the California-based Que Huong Charity Center is registered with the Internal Revenue Service and operates three charity centers in Vietnam that provide for 150 orphans, disabled children and poor people.

“I really had the desire to do something,” Stam said. She and her classmates had visited a different orphanage during her visit, but didn’t send the clothing there because the students had already brought those children supplies, food and toys.

She decided to send the clothing to the Que Huong Charity Center after consulting with her geometry teacher, Khoa Khuong, who organizes the school’s trips to his native Vietnam.

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UPS Store co-owner Sandi Boynton said she and her partner, Bill Jones, were happy to donate $1,000 to help Stam. Because of customs, they had to repackage everything, and itemize the contents of the boxes, she said.

“We felt really bad that it was so expensive and we decided to just bite the bullet” and donate the $1,000, in keeping with their practice to donate about that much to various charities every year.

“We just decided this would be our cause this year,” she said.

Stam said this was the first time she has raised funds or collected goods for a cause. She currently volunteers at the Center for Grieving Children in Portland and for the past two summers volunteered for two weeks at the Falmouth Recreation Department summer camp program.

“They’re great kids at NYA,” said Boynton. “The credit is really to (Stam). All we did was back her up a little.”


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