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When a group of 70 highly gifted elementary school students were asked how they raised more than $3,500 for charity in the past month, 9-year-old Jack Hasty said simply, “Well, we asked for it.”
The students’ initial strategy was elementary, perhaps, but their execution was carefully planned. Hasty and his 4-foot-tall classmates were taught to stick out their hand, shake firmly, look a potential donor straight in the eye and confidently explain their mission.
The money came pouring in.
“Are you sure we can’t accept credit cards?” asked one student in teacher Lorenda Murphy’s fifth grade class.
The charity drives in the third, fourth and fifth grade classes at McCoy Elementary School were the last task in an 8-week course on philanthropy. Organizer Tami Neff is on a mission to create charitable children, jumpstarting the Philanthropy and Volunteerism in Education (PAVE) program for the first year at Carrollton-Farmers Branch ISD.
Children who learn about philanthropy before age 12 will donate to charities for their entire life, Neff said.
Several students at McCoy Elementary have already pledged to do so.
Each class executed its own donation drive, taking steps to research and choose the best-suited charity. The third and fifth graders chose Operation Kindness, the no-kill shelter in Carrollton, as the recipient for their monies.
Lisa Runyon’s fourth grade class chose the Texas Scottish Rite Hospital for Children — for which their class of 25 raised $2,631. That money will buy three prosthetic limbs or braces for five children with scoliosis.
Scottish Rite Hospital was a carefully-chosen choice, said Kara Bramhall, 9.
“If anyone in my class got a disease, or even myself, I hope we would help them,” Bramhall said matter-of-factly.
The money they raised may also go toward buying toys for children who cannot leave the hospital during the holidays.
The tactic in each classroom was to write letters to family, friends and neighbors explaining their cause. Each letter was to be individually tailored to its recipient and had to follow the correct format of a professional grant proposal.
It was a tricky exercise, Hasty said. Some students wrote three or more drafts until their letters passed muster.
Neff also taught the students how to approach someone and ask for money, as well as who a good candidate may be. Grandparents, Hasty said, were a great target.
“Grandparents love kids,” he said. His grandparents gave him a $100 check.
The students were also taught how their donations could change lives. Ask any child enrolled in the PAVE program, and they can rattle off the definition of philanthropy: Love for mankind, as Neff has taught them.
“It makes you feel more thankful for everything that you have,” said Austin Smith, a fifth-grader. “That’s what the PAVE program made me feel.”
The three classes involved received their diplomas Tuesday and presented their checks to Operation Kindness and Scottish Rite in front of the entire school. Nancy White’s third grade class raised $600, Runyon’s fourth grade class raised $2,631, and Murphy’s fifth grade class raised $318.
As the students stood in front of their peers, beaming, kindergarteners through fifth-graders cheered them on. It seemed only appropriate that Principal Dawn Rink dismissed the students with her usual mantra.
“Have a great day preparing for college,” she told the elementary school students.
Contact Community Editor Sarah Blaskovich at 972-628-4074 or SBlaskovich@acnpapers.com.
