Every day our principal, Mrs. Kroll, asks us to be Jesus for someone. Today, one of our seventh grade students, her two brothers, and their parents exemplified this idea magnificently. While rolling coins from their change jar, they decided to donate half the rolls to The Smile Train, a charity the middle schoolers support due to our reading about a character with cleft palate. Half of the coins amounted to $73.50. That is nearly one-third of the total cost of surgery for one child.
The power of a smile is contagious. What can you do to make someone smile? How can you be Jesus for someone today?
Part of our mission statement as a school states that we are “building a caring community that serves others”. We try to live up to that standard by helping people in our local, national, and global communities. Every year we send our accumulated 25 cent “lost and found” fines, as well as any other donations, to the Smile Train. The Smile Train funds operations to fix cleft lip and cleft palate in developing nations. The surgery costs $250 and takes as little as 45 minutes. Every year for the last six years we’ve sent our money to The Smile Train. We began this fundraising because the 7th graders read the novel Crispin: At the Edge of the World by Avi; one of the characters in the story suffers from an untreated cleft lip. Last year one of our students donated over $200 herself; it was money she had been saving for new clothes.
On the 10th anniversary of 9/11, we held a fundraising baseball game at our school, “9 Innings for 9/11.” Families donated a few dollars to play baseball; we sold hot dogs and popcorn, held a bake sale, and ran a raffle. We raised a little over $800 that afternoon and donated the proceeds to The Smile Train, St. Jude’s Hospital, Share our Strength, and Our Mother’s House.
This year after reading the book, A Long Walk to Water by Linda Sue Park, we visited the website Water for South Sudan. We talked about ways to help the people in South Sudan dig and maintain wells for drinking water, but we haven’t yet put any plans into action. We are glad for this week’s Student Blogging Challenge to remind us about our resolve and brainstorm some ideas so that the children and families in South Sudan can have safe drinking water, something we in America take for granted.
What are some ideas that we can do as a middle school to raise money for Water for South Sudan?
Watch this video from Disney’s Bridget Mendler called We Can Change the World and be inspired to take one step at a time…
