By Lindsay Tice,Staff Writer

POLAND – When Teens Without Borders started last year, it struggled to help one 15-year-old tsunami victim.

The new Poland Regional High School group had few members and no reputation. Members strained to raise even $800, half the girl’s school tuition.

Today, donation boxes seem to fill like magic. The group that struggled to help one teenager is now looking out for 600 to 700, an entire Louisiana high school.

Their goal: to help the world.

“It needs to be done,” said 15-year-old Erica Gagnon. “We’re just taking a task that should be normal but often isn’t.”

French teacher Linda Freese, Spanish teacher Linda Kelley and a few students started Teens Without Borders after a tsunami devastated Indonesia last December. Named after Doctors Without Borders, an international organization that brings medical care to needy countries, the Poland group sought to help teenagers.

But the club was tiny and relatively unknown, even within its own school. It had so few members that it couldn’t even elect officers.

Through Freese’s brother, who was working in Indonesia, the group found a 15-year-old girl devastated by the tsunami. They spent months collecting bottles and running donation drives to pay for her school tuition, clothes and books.

Katrina rally

They were still working on it when Hurricane Katrina decimated the Gulf Coast.

“We just immediately knew we had to take this on, too,” Gagnon said.

Their first contact was a former Poland Regional High School teacher who was working in Louisiana. They learned about her school, Northshore High School in Slidell, where hundreds of teenagers needed clothes, books and essentials. The school itself needed basic supplies.

“Slidell’s high school is trying to get started, but they have nothing, (none of) the things we take for granted,” said 15-year-old Emma Ambrose.

When the new school year started at Poland, about 25 kids joined Teens Without Borders. After several schoolwide announcements, their new project seemed to catch fire.

The group has raised hundreds of dollars in a couple of months. People constantly drop off T-shirts, shoes, school supplies and toiletries.

The group gathers the donations every afternoon. By morning, the donation boxes are filled again.

“That’s kind of the magic of it: Nobody wants any recognition,” said Ambrose.

The group will accept donations through Nov. 9, then fill a 17- to 24-foot truck and send it down. A parent has volunteered to drive and pay for the gas.

The donated items could already fill half a truck.

As the Louisiana project continues, Teens Without Borders is also still raising money for the Indonesian 15-year-old. They need to raise another $800 by December to pay the other half of her school tuition.

They plan to help her all the way through high school.

They figure they can do that, and more.

“When this is done, we’re going to get right on the earthquake in Pakistan,” Ambrose said.