“Are you guys going to be a great audience today?”

“Yeah!” the children cried out to their principal.

Karen Remen, executive director of DeKalb county’s Red Cross chapter, walked across the gymnasium and stood before the fidgeting throng of children, all of whom obediently silenced.

“It’s one of the worst disasters in history, and each of you had a hand in helping out,” she said of the devastating tsunami in Asia which occurred in December.

This winter, the third, fourth and fifth graders of Lincoln Elementary School, 220 E. Sunset Place, composed a holiday CD which sold for $10 each.

The proceeds from the CD sales were donated to the Red Cross. Three months and 220 CD sales later, the students donated $1814.66 toward the organization’s tsunami relief effort. About $3 dollars from each sale paid for production expenses.

“I think it’s fantastic they undertook this effort,” Remen said. “I certainly did not know [they would raise this much]. This is a lot of money.”

The CD, entitled “A Season of Hope: A Tribute to the Victims of Tsunami 2004,” is a very professional bit of work, said Tom Burski, the school’s principal.

Accompanying the children’s carols are instrumental compositions produced by the school’s students and Jim Kanas. Kanas, the music teacher and producer of the CD, added his own guitar riffs.

The cover art for the CD, done in crayon, was created by a 5th grader after she won a school-wide contest.

On the cover, the road traveling into a rising sun represents the hope that only the future can bring, Burski said.

Although raising money was the tangible element of the exercise, Remen said what the kids learned has its own special value.

“It teaches them to care for other people. I hope they realize that they did make a difference,” she said. “It’s something they can take into the future.”