Student Contributor -K.Coan
My Kindergarten students will raise money and work with various peers and Blessings in a Backpack to provide well-balanced meals to students on the weekends so that they don’t go hungry. The students will have the choice of which location(s) they want to send their donations to make the project a bit more personal for each of the students. After the donations have been made, students can begin volunteering their time to possibly raise more and learn more about the organizations from those who run it.
After students learned about Blessings in a Backpack and spent time seeing all the children that need our help to receive food on the weekends outside of school, it was time for us to start fundraising. There are 24 students in the class, and I would have students work in teams of 5 or 6 each group having a different task for the fundraisers. As a class we will come up with a list of strategies for the best fundraisers and then choose our top two choices. It might take a while for students to come up with enough money ($100) to feed just one child, but once we come up with the money it will be very rewarding to be able to choose exactly where that money is going as a class. I think this is a medium to large sized project because we might need to devote quite a bit of time on one big fundraiser and a smaller one. When I first mentioned this idea to my new classroom, the students seemed very excited to help others out, as they are very helpful and generous to their peers. It was very enlightening to see the excited on the student’s faces when they found out they were going to get to help people around the United States with a balanced meal over the weekend.
So far with just the introduction of my project, my students were very excited to be able to help and make a difference in the community and world. I feel like it was most definitely worth all the extra time that I spent explaining and working with students and what we could be doing for those around us. I think that so far I might be underestimating with the amount of time I will spend planning some of these fundraisers. When I reached out to a few businesses I was surprised at how helpful they were in answering questions of the process we would need to go through in order to make this project happen. I could not get ahold of the chief’s team to see if it would be possible to use their goalie for one of our big fundraisers. I would most definitely use these fundraising ideas in the future for other projects depending on the availability in my geographic location. I had to modify the fundraisers along the way based on what was available at my school and surrounding areas and businesses. My advice to others would be that even though it might be difficult and stressful, keep thinking of the end goal because I promise every minute that you spent on this project will be worth it when you see your student’s faces light up and feel that you’ve been able to help make a difference.
