Back in September, the Advisory Class at Allen East Middle School was tasked with finding a way to help out their community. But with COVID-19 putting a wrench into many of their plans, they had to get a little creative.
"Especially during these hard times of quarantining and everything else, we thought we can’t very well do a back sale or anything like that," said Logan Sanders, a sixth grader at Allen East. "We sort of thought that we could do everything socially distant."
The class settled on a fundraiser that they dubbed Make A Change. They designed makeshift piggy banks for classrooms to collect students' spare change. The money raised will go towards Feeding America, a network of food banks that includes our area's own West Ohio Food Bank.
Originally the plan was to keep the fundraiser within the middle school, but the kids decided to aim a little higher and involved grades K through 12.
"It’s nice it’s nice because the whole school can donate money and every dollar feeds 10 families," said Jaden Covault, a sixth grader at Allen East. "It’s nice because because the whole school is donating and we have a lot of people in our school, so that helps nicely."
Jessica Rolfes, the teacher of the Advisory Class, says that it's been a bit of a process to get this fundraiser off the ground - but her students are definitely showing that any roadblocks couldn't hold them down for long.
"Every day they come to school to do an announcement to remind students to bring in their change, and next week they’re going to have to stay after school every day and tediously count change from 60 piggy banks, it’s going to be a lot," said Rolfes, who is also the fifth and sixth grade language arts teacher for Allen East. "But they’re pumped about it, they’re excited, and I love seeing that."
The fundraiser will run until Friday, December 11th.
