We recently received this inspirational FOR Club project idea from Kay Frank, a School Counselor, at Surline Middle School in Michigan. Read how this middle school came together to help another middle school in need, and in perfect timing.
Kay: One of our FOR Club advisors saw on the Rachel’s Challenge Facebook page that we could “adopt” a school that was affected by the hurricanes at the beginning of this school year. Ultimately, our school, Surline Middle School in West Branch, Michigan, was connected with Lobit Middle School in Dickinson, Texas. Lobit Middle School suggested that it was getting cold in Texas, (sometimes the temperature dipping into the 50’s…which makes people from Michigan smile) and maybe we could organize a hoodie drive. People in northern Michigan have hoodies, and so, certainly, that was something we could do.
…IF ONE PERSON CAN GO OUT OF THEIR WAY TO SHOW COMPASSION, THEN IT WILL START A CHAIN REACTION OF THE SAME.
– Rachel Joy Scott
So our FOR Club sponsored a school-wide hoodie drive during the week of November 6th. We made it a friendly competition between the first hour classes. Whichever class brought in the most (per student) was provided a doughnut and apple juice treat compliments of the FOR Club. Our 590 students brought in over 375 hoodies – some new, some gently used. The winning class averaged bringing 2.8 hoodies for each student in the room! We washed the gently used hoodies and the FOR Club met twice to inspect, tag and organize them by size in order to make their distribution easier.
We knew that shipping would be a lot of money. We projected that shipping the hoodies would be between $300 to $600. It was just over $700. In order to offset the costs of shipping, we held a Halloween dance. Never have so many kids attended and we cleared over $900. So we had the money for the purpose of getting hoodies to Lobit. On November 30th we sent 10 large boxes to Lobit Middle School in Texas. We were able to send over 303 pounds of hoodies!
The way that everything fell into place was a great lesson from everyone and it was wonderful to see the students get excited about extending compassion to others. By the way, students at Lobit received the hoodies right before a rare snow fall! It would have been easier to just send Lobit a check, but the lessons of giving and compassion we experienced along the way, were priceless.
IT WOULD HAVE BEEN EASIER TO JUST SEND LOBIT A CHECK, BUT THE LESSONS OF GIVING AND COMPASSION WE EXPERIENCED ALONG THE WAY, WERE PRICELESS.
– Kay Frank, School Counselor at Surline Middle School in Michigan
