Millburn High School senior Eric Messinger addresses a Drew University student conference on Darfur in January 2006. Photos by Robert Wiener
January 10, 2008
When they organized Help Darfur Now in 2005, little did three MetroWest teenagers dream they would see their organization grow to more than 200 chapters across the country.
Nor did Arielle Wisotsky or Eric and David Messinger imagine they would get help from a top New York City retailer.
ABC Carpet & Home in downtown Manhattan offered space for the organization to raise funds through the sale of its specially designed jewelry.
Aided by a big display ad in its windows and armed with a cash register on loan from ABC, they set up shop near the store’s Santa Claus at the front of the large furniture and furnishings purveyor. The effort began at Thanksgiving and will continue through Valentine’s Day.
“We were looking for new ways to raise money — something with a higher price and a higher return,” said Eric, a senior at Millburn High School.
“We wanted to do something a little more creative and symbolic than just T-shirts,” said Wisotsky, at home in Basking Ridge while on semester break from her freshman year at Tufts University in Massachusetts.
Her personal battle against the rape and slaughter of Darfurians by Sudanese militias began after a high school visit three years ago to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington.
“I saw some pamphlets about Darfur, a place I had never heard of at that point,” said Wisotsky. “I was pretty shocked that something like that could be going on. My grandmother is a Holocaust survivor, and it really resonated with me.”
The students thought they would sell jewelry to support the cause.
“We went on Web sites and found a designer in New York City, Jane Diaz, who makes silver necklaces and has her stuff in a lot of young, hip stores,” explained Karen Sockoloff, mother of the Messinger brothers. The family lives in Short Hills, and David is a student at the University of Maine.
The young people described a charm featuring a map of Africa with a little green stone embedded to represent Darfur.
Diaz turned the concept into two different designs: a $50 sterling silver pendant on a green string and a similar design on a silver chain with the extra adornments of a heart and a helping hand, which sells for $100.
As the teenagers were selling the necklaces at a United Nations rally for Darfur last Sept. 16, Paulette Cole, CEO of ABC, passed by.
“She loved them,” said Sockoloff. “She gave us her card and said she wanted to feature them in her store.”
The Help Darfur Now necklace, complete with a sterling silver chain and charms representing a kind heart and a helping hand, are selling for $100. Another version sells for $50.
Before the holiday shopping season, the young volunteers traveled each weekend to the ABC store on 19th Street and Broadway to sell the necklaces.
“The kids had pamphlets from Help Darfur Now and a donation box so they could collect money from people waiting on line to see Santa,” said the Messingers’ mother.
In one month, they sold 200 of the less expensive necklaces and 100 of the more expensive. ABC is also selling them on-line, said Sockoloff, who acts as an adult adviser to the group.
She said Help Darfur Now has raised $425,000 — money it passes on to Doctors Without Borders, the International Rescue Committee, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, and the Save Darfur Coalition, the umbrella organization that coordinates efforts to end the genocide.
But, she noted, the death toll is believed to be approaching 500,000, and some three million Darfurians are now living in harsh conditions as refugees.
“I am very proud of our kids, said Sockoloff. “I just wish that the situation were getting better instead of worse.”