In the month of April, Reedy Student Council ran a school-wide fundraiser called Pennies for Patients to help raise money for the local Leukemia-Lymphoma society. This fundraiser is a competition between third period classes on “B” days to raise the most money for the cause.

During the fundraiser, every teacher has a ziplock bag to put out in their class for students to drop spare change in. StuCo then picks up the bags from all the teachers to collect the money and track the fundraising of each class.

“We’ve incorporated the competitive aspect hoping to get kids involved more that way,”  said Student Council Advisor, Alexandra Caldwell. “We are offering a lunch from Olive Garden to the 3B class that raises the most money and a $10 Starbucks gift card for the teacher of that class.”

With the many organizations that make up our school, we are always looking for new opportunities to help out our local community in any way we can. Reedy has put on the Pennies for Patients fundraisers every year to help raise money for the Leukemia-Lymphoma society in DFW.

“We will give the money that we raise straight to the Leukemia-Lymphoma society to help support research for cures and treatments,” said Ms. Caldwell. “They also help the families of the patients with things like hospitals bills and hotel stays because families can’t always stay in the hospitals.”

StuCo has beenworking to spread awareness for the fundraiser hoping to get more students involved. They have set an overall goal of $4,000 to raise by April, 30th, when the fundraiser will close.

“StuCo works to create awareness for this fundraiser by sending things out in the newsletter, making posters, making announcements and working with the broadcast classes to spread word,” Ms. Caldwell said. “Although we rely a lot on the teachers to bring it up in class because word of mouth is always the most effective.”

Because of the few students in our school that have dealt with cancer, raising money for treatments and families of patients is something that we have always taken to heart. Raising money for a cause that has affected people in our pride is a way for the students to stay connected.

“I think that having a personal tie with the diseases in our school, makes the students want to participate and do everything they can,” said Ms. Caldwell.“We realize that cancer can affect anyone in our lives, and so having to witness cancer within our own school really impacts the kids and motivates them to get involved when we do fundraisers like this.”

Tuesday, April 30th is the last day for students to raise money in their third period classes. StuCo will collect the final bags of money and will announce the winning class later this week.

“The foreign language department has always been a strong competitor in years past, so we just want to encourage them to keep it up and also encourageother classes to keep going with their fundraising,” Ms. Caldwell said. “Some classes have thirty students while others have fifteen, so we try to do an average when calculating the class participation to make it more fair.”

Fundraisers like this are ways for Reedy to stay connected with the local community. By raising money for the Leukemia-Lymphoma society, we are reminded to always give back in anyway we can.

“Sometimes we are so disconnected where we know these illnesses exist, but we just don’t think it will happen to us or to a loved one,” said Ms. Caldwell. “So if we can just do a small piece for the cause, we can make a big impact.”