Money wars raise funds for overseas students

St. Olaf Catholic School

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BOUNTIFUL — Sharp new pencils, crisp clean notebooks, and new text books are what every student at Saint Olaf School expects on the first day of school each year. However, that is not how schools in other parts of the word operate. New school supplies are scarce in many Third World countries. The fifth-grade students at Saint Olaf discovered this fact as they were learning about social justice. They were planning a project to provide school supplies for children in poor countries. At first, they wanted to send actual supplies to a school. However, when Sam VanDongen placed a call to Catholic Relief Services, he discovered that sending items to a foreign country would not be a very efficient way to get them to a school.

"Catholic Relief Services said that it is best to collect money instead of sending actual supplies," Sam said.

The class researched Catholic Relief Services and found that the organization offers aid on four continents and in 91 countries, said Jentrie Gordy.

The students decided to sponsor school-wide "Money Wars" to raise funds for the school supplies. Bethany Rogers explained that each class would have a jar and the object of the "War" was to fill other class’ jars with money. The winner would be the class with the least amount of money in their jar.

Daniel Mulder explained some of the rules. "Don’t disturb classes: Money can only be put in jars before and after school and during recess. Jars must be visible. Money can’t be taken out of your jar. All kinds of money will be accepted."

It was fun to observe class members sabotaging money jars belonging to other grades by putting as much money as possible into their jars.

Students discovered creative ways to earn their own money for "Money Wars." Dylan Goodin helped clean around his house, and Mathew Skorut did chores in the evening and mowed lawns to earn money.

After 10 days of frantic competition among all classes, pre-K through Grade 8, the "War" ended and the sixth grade was declared the winner. Pencils, such as the ones students overseas will receive, were the sixth-graders’ reward for being the victorious class.

The fifth grade’s project netted $429.10, which was immediately sent to Catholic Relief Services to provide new school supplies for students in Africa.

Because each class will be responsible for creating and implementing some type of service activity during the school year, it will be very interesting to see if they can top this effort by the fifth-graders. Students are excited to begin planning their own class projects.

Photo and story courtesy of St. Olaf Catholic School