American Red Cross

The American Red Cross is the organization through which the students’ response to the Haiti earthquake acquires a public and practical form. After witnessing images of collapsed schools, dazed orphans, and homeless families, students at Northeast High School do more than discuss empathy: they collect money and deliver it in person to a local Red Cross office. The organization therefore marks the point where classroom feeling becomes community action.

Role in the Haiti Relief Effort

The students connect their relief campaign to Extravadanza, a large variety show involving roughly two hundred performers from Northeast and two other area high schools. Students who are not part of the cast organize themselves into a Salvation Army-like collection effort, making signs and preparing donation buckets for use before, during, and after the performance. Even Al G and Matt participate, especially after Tony Danza promises to match whatever the group raises; they treat the offer as a challenge and intensify their fundraising.

Donation and Delivery

The performance combines entertainment, school cooperation, and relief work. Onstage, students sing and dance in large musical numbers while those outside the production work through the auditorium and lobby. Their collection exceeds four hundred dollars, and Tony Danza’s matching contribution doubles the total to eight hundred dollars. The students recount the money automatically, then pack and deliver the donation in person to the local American Red Cross office. That physical delivery gives their charitable impulse an institutional destination and makes the result measurable rather than merely aspirational.

Institutional and Educational Significance

The American Red Cross is not presented as a sustained on-page character or as an organization whose internal structure is examined. Its significance lies in the function it performs within the school narrative: it provides a trusted civic channel for aid after the earthquake and receives the students’ work as a real contribution. The route from televised catastrophe to classroom empathy, from empathy to fundraising, and from fundraising to the Red Cross office models an educational process based on participation and action. Students are not left as passive spectators of suffering; they become organizers, collectors, and donors.

Consequences for the Students’ Image

The donation changes the meaning of the performance for the students and for Tony Danza. The money raised to air-condition the school library remains part of Extravadanza’s original purpose, but the Haiti campaign expands the event beyond school self-interest. As the students count, pack, and personally deliver the funds, Tony Danza observes their pride and sees evidence against the assumption that inner-city youth are lost causes. The American Red Cross thus becomes the endpoint of a reversal in expectation: students whom outsiders might dismiss demonstrate empathy, initiative, cooperation, and a willingness to help people far beyond their own school community.