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As 5-year-old Brianna Christianson put the finishing touches on a card she's drawn of the Appalachian Mountains, she couldn't help pointing out the home she stenciled in on the slope of a tall, steep mountain.

"I know something about the people on top of it," she said. "They're very poor."

Brianna has been learning about the poverty in Appalachia since November through a project started by her primary teacher at The Barrie School, a Montessori school in Silver Spring's Layhill area.

She and her classmates have been collecting gently used coats, toys, clothes and undergarments for an elementary school in eastern Kentucky, one of the poorest areas in nation. After a winter of soliciting donations, they packed it all in boxes last week, ready for the post office.

The community service project started when Brianna's teacher Elja Leipe read about the poverty in Appalachia in a magazine.

She reached out to Appalachia Ministries, a Christian nonprofit based in eastern Kentucky that helps needy families, and then began weaving the region and their poverty into every lesson she could think of.

The point was to instill in the children a connection with Appalachia and goodwill, she said.

"It's a little bit tough these days to ask people to donate," she said. "But tough times for people already in need are a disaster."

The donations continued throughout the holiday season — the kids made Valentine's Day cards for the students on the receiving end — and are being sent out this week to fill the void between holiday-season donations, Leipe said.

Several hundred miles away, Marsha Worley, who heads the donation program for Appalachian Ministries, said she's grateful for the mid-season donations, which have been even lower in a struggling economy.

Worley has been working with some of the poorest elementary schools in the area for more than a decade, after witnessing the poverty as a bus driver in the area.

"A majority of the kids were coming underdressed and not well taken care of," Worley said.

Worley said Kentucky used to be a gas, oil and coal mining state. It still is, but in a new, high-tech society those jobs are no longer in high demand, she said.

"A lot of families, even if parents work, they're usually at minimum wage," she said. "They need a lot of help."

Worley said Appalachian Ministries focuses on the children of those families, taking students out for breakfast or lunch, hosting holiday parties and subsidizing a prom dress or a basketball uniform for high school students.

She said they try to send the message to children in Appalachia: "You can break the cycle. You don't have to continue on this way."

Leipe said she hopes to make this a permanent project and possibly create a pen pal situation with the children in Appalachia. The benefits will last both sets of students a lifetime, she said.

"They have a permanent bond with it. They care."