T-shirt sales to fund vaccines

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T-shirt sales to fund vaccines

The Yomiuri Shimbun

An illustrator has got together with about 100 fellow artists andothers to create individually designed T-shirts to sell online toraise funds for the medical treatment of children in impoverishednations.

Saori Yoshinaga, 28, of Namiemachi, Fukushima Prefecture, plans toput about 100 T-shirts on sale this summer on a Web site she runs.One of them is printed with a picture drawn by a boy who drowned atthe age of 6 in a swimming pool in Soma, in the prefecture, lastsummer.

Besides illustrating under the pen name rara, Yoshinaga also writeschildren's picture books, one of which has sold about 20,000copies.

She became concerned about health issues after her dotinggrandfather died in April, and wondered what she could do forchildren suffering from disease.

Believing she could fund vaccines for children across the world bycreating attractive T-shirts that people would be happy to buy, sheasked illustrators and photographers she knew for help. Thesefriends then called on their friends and about 100 people becameinvolved in the project.

Each participant is free to design a T-shirt as they please, withYoshinaga then putting them on sale on her Web site, Aloha Presents2008.

A picture drawn by Seishu Abe, who drowned in a swimming pool atmunicipal-run Sakuragaoka Primary School last August, is among thedesigns.

Seishu loved Yoshinaga's picture books, and his mother, Michiko,41, read from the book after her son died.

The idea to include Seishu's picture as a design came when Michikoheard about the scheme after getting in touch with Yoshinaga. Theboy's mother consented to having one of her son's pictures on aT-shirt included in the online sale.

The boy had won a prize for his picture at a prefecturalcompetition.

Yoshinaga selected a picture of a dragon that Seishu had painted asan assignment over the summer holiday.

"I hope to show what Seishu left us through this wonderful, vibrantpicture," Yoshinaga said.

The T-shirts will be sold by advance order onwww.alohapresents.com, Yoshinaga's Web site, from July 27 to Aug.8.

T-shirts will be available in sizes ranging from children's toadult male sizes, and are expected to be priced at about 3,000 yen.

Profits will be donated to the Japan Committee Vaccines for theWorld's Children, a Chiyoda Ward, Tokyo-based nonprofitorganization that supports medical treatment for children in poorcountries.