January 19, 2000
Bracelets link students from Texas, Russia
___By Scott Collins
___Buckner Baptist Benevolences
___The fable of the Friendship Bracelet, according to Gillian Cooke, is that if you hand-make a bracelet for a friend and then tie it onto the friend's wrist, the friend is supposed to make a wish. If the friend wears the bracelet until it falls off, the wish is supposed to cometrue.
GILLIAN COOKE, who headed a campaign to make friendship bracelets for Russian orphans, shares bracelets with children in St. Petersburg. (Photo by Scott Collins)
___That is the fable. What is not a fable is that thousands of Russian orphans are wearing friendship bracelets today. And whether or not their wishes come true, they know someone half a world away cares for them.
___Cooke had the idea to make friendship bracelets and carry them to Russia with her when she went as part of Buckner International Services' "Shoes for Russian Souls" distribution trip.
___Cooke, a member at South Main Baptist Church in Houston, got the idea from fellow church member Debbie McLeod-Sears.
___Their idea exploded when Cooke spoke to students at Dulles High School in the Fort Bend Independent School District, south of Houston. The students were members of a home economics class taught by Cooke's daughter, Roberta Prater.
___Before Cooke could finish her presentation, students already were weaving bracelets from colored thread. They set an initial goal of 3,000 bracelets, the number of students at Dulles. Within only a few days, they had made more than 6,500 bracelets before completing 10,621.
___Almost everyone at the school was involved in the project--students, teachers, administrators and parents. Friendly competitions sprang up among clubs and other groups.
___And while the visible result was thousands of handmade bracelets, Cooke and others who participated in the event believe much more was gained from the students' efforts.
___"One of the boys stopped me, and he said, 'You know, there is a spirit in this school that I have never, ever known,'" Cooke recalled. "And I said, 'I know whose Spirit that is.' He just smiled at me."
___The bracelets became a way students at Dulles could "tell their own stories," Cooke said.
___Students seemed to feel free to talk about themselves as they made the bracelets, including one student who told Cooke he had grown up in a children's home.
___"I really believe they (students) know each other better. We had football players with hands as big as plates making these little tiny bracelets. Some of the students went home and had their grandparents teach them how to make different knots.
___"They're communicating with their siblings and their families on a level they hadn't communicated before. It just spread throughout the whole family and throughout the whole school," she said.
___Dulles High School teachers said that ironically, a project designed to change the lives of Russian orphans thousands of miles away actually changed the lives of students making the bracelets.
___Henry Hill, chairman of trustees at Buckner and also a member at South Main, said the students' work was rewarded by the expressions on the faces of the Russian orphans who received the bracelets.
___"When I look into the faces of these orphans, I see eyes that suddenly brighten. I see smiles appear. It really does your heart good," Hill said.
___The bracelets played an important role in conveying love to the orphans, he added.
___"I think the bracelets point out something very, very important today--regardless of race, color, creed or whatever, kids can come together and function together and support an activity that's so important.
___"These bracelets show love and care from people in America, and they show that regardless of where you come from, you can get together and share a common goal in providing something so special to children so far away. That says: 'We're thinking about you. We care about you. And we love you.'"
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