On Yahoo!, one of todays featured items was a story about Colton Roe of Chantilly, Virginia, and his "Pennies for Passing" campaign to fight hunger. Colton is a 13-year-old quarterback who collects pledges against how well he performs on the football field. His thought in creating the program was, just as funding could be raised based on miles walked in a walkathon, he would ask for pennies to be pledged for each yard he threw for on the football field. Roe's efforts over the past three seasons (he started at age 11), have been based on the principle that every little bit helps "move the chains" and have raised over $6500 for the nonprofit Food for Others. Next year, he and his dad aim to spread the program throughout his Northern Virginia league.
In a quick search for more information, I stumbled across a "Penny War" as another novel fundraising effort by youth. Connie Hein reported, in her article for the Windsor Beacon about this Christmas fundraiser at Colorado's Windsor Charter Academy. Each class had a bucket where students brought their pennies to donate. The war part of the fundraiser came when students from other classes could bring nickels, dimes, quarters or dollars to put in other classes' buckets to cancel out an equal amount of donated pennies. The classes competed a for a pizza party prize. The money raised went to Candy Canes and Caring, an organization that purchases and distributes food clothes and gifts to needy local families during the Christmas holiday season.
Efforts like this, where children directly participate in and sometimes even become passionate about and/or very successful in helping their community truly warm my heart. Myself included, we are often too quick to notice and point out what is wrong in our world. The fact that even young children are actively participating in these unselfish efforts to help others offers is certainly reason for much hope and pride.
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