It doesn’t have to make a lot of sense, even if it does make a lot of cents. The student body of Neil M. Ross Catholic Elementary spent the last month collecting pennies in the interest of putting the now defunct coinage to good use… some really, really good use.
On Thursday, teacher Brett Arlinghaus and a leadership team composed of his Grade 6 students were admiring the results of their efforts: 585 pounds of copper Canadian pennies, ready to be bagged.
“It was actually quite a lot. I couldn’t believe it,” he laughed, joking that he feels like the Monopoly Man. He denied that the bags had big dollar or even cent symbols printed on them.
The project began as a result of a student trip to a We Day event in Calgary back in October. The event is an outreach effort of Free the Children, a Canadian-based international charity that works with schools to empower youth to become socially conscious citizens of the world.
One of the charity’s initiatives is to help provide clean drinking water to the world.
“They kind of got infected by that bug of social justice. It’s just such an easy thing to do. We have all these pennies and we’re getting rid of them anyway. Why not collect them and use them for something so they’re not totally useless. You can potentially change a person’s life.”
The students decided that they wanted to support one of the projects that they learned about on We Day. We Create Change is an effort to help provide clean drinking water to the developing world.
“We set up a leadership team after We Day full of a bunch of Grade 6 students. This was one of the projects that they wanted to tackle. It really snowballed. They ran with the idea,” he said, adding that the students made presentations during school assemblies and there was a challenge between classes to bring in the most poundage.
Free the Children’s website (www.freethechildren.com) states that women around the world spend 200 million hours collecting water for their families every single day. It also states that 80 per cent of illnesses in developing countries are linked to poor water and sanitation and that one billion people live without access to fresh drinking water.
Two years ago, the United Nations recognized that clean drinking water and sanitation are essential human rights.
Because of the global water crisis and events like last year’s drought in East Africa, Free the Children set a goal of providing 100,000 people with clean water for life. The organization claims that 2,500 pennies (or $25) is enough for one person.
“One bag of pennies gives one person clean water for life. That really resonated with the kids. There are people out there that don’t have clean water, they can’t just turn on a tap and have access to water when they want it.”
Before the pennies were bagged and hauled off to a local branch of the Royal Bank to be weighed and counted, Arlinghaus was still considerably impressed with the collective achievement.
“It’s crazy. I think we’ve drained everybody’s couches of pennies!” he laughed. “We’re going to have to put them in the back of one of the staff member’s trucks because my car tires would pop!”
The school is now hoping to find out where the money will be going so the students can follow up on how their work has actually made an impact elsewhere in the world. Next year it will probably take on a different We Day project. Arlinghaus noted the poignant We are Silent anti-bullying campaign.
“We have an active student population. They just realize that they have a little bit of power and they can affect some change.”
