Kids at Hazelgrove Elementary School raised nearly $10K for Ukraine.
Hazelgrove’s Grade 7 student leadership team organized a school-wide skip-a-thon May 20 and raised $9,571.
“The whole school collected contributions for the cause and then skipped for 45 minutes,” said Jill Payne, a teacher at Hazelgrove. “The leadership team voted to donate any money raised to the Ukraine Humanitarian Project through the Red Cross.”
Payne is also the coordinator for the leadership team, but said she’s more like a coach. The kids do all the work and make all the decisions.
She said the Grade 7 leadership team puts on a number of charitable events every school year that go to support different causes.
“We do skip-a-thon each year,” said Payne. “It’s up to the Grade 7 student leaders to choose the charity the school supports.”
She said the kids will get together and put forth a few ideas of what charity or cause they should donate to. Then they vote to decide on the charity.
“I’m proud the kids came up with such a thoughtful idea. One of them picked Ukraine and the vote was unanimous. It’s current and it shows the kids know at least a little about what’s going on around the world.”
She said the school more than tripled their original goal of $3,000.
“I was pretty shocked at how much we raised,” Payne added. “The community was so generous.”
She said one kid at the school set up a lemonade stand to raise additional money and another kid’s dad took the pledge sheet to his work and garnered more than $1,000.
“Even now as I think about it, I’m still pretty shocked we got that much.”
Payne said the leadership team gives up their lunch hours to work on their charitable endeavours, including supporting the Cloverdale Christmas Hamper program.
“The community at Hazelgrove is so generous,” added Payne. “At Christmas, we get boxes and boxes of food that goes to the hamper program.”
editor@cloverdalereporter.com
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