St. Albert The Great

Written by Emily Gilfillan, Youth Programming Coordinator, Western Canada Office

St. Albert The Great is an amazing elementary and Jr. high school in Calgary, Alberta that became incredibly involved with Free The Children last year.

Last fall, Mr. Bishop’s grade 4 class heard about Free The Children and decided to write a letter home to their parents explaining their desire to fundraise for kids in Haiti. They created a coin drive campaign and soon pennies started to fill their classroom jar. By mid-November, the students had already raised $170, and were so excited, that by Christmas the other two grade 4 classes were raising coins for Haiti as well.

The campaign was such a success that Mr. Bishop’s class expanded it to the whole school and friendly competitions started to form amongst classrooms. Full families got involved with some parents even bringing the idea to their workplace. Soon enough, classroom juice containers were coming in filled with coins! The grade 4’s didn’t need to finish their math unit as they spent many afternoons counting and rolling coins to fill shoe box after shoe box!

In addition to the coin drive, students participated in four spirit days in their school, where they each contributed $1 for a themed hat day, jersey day, green day and an iPod/stuffy day. The theme days were a lot of fun for everyone and brought the whole school together!

After a full year of activities, St. Albert the Great was extremely proud to present Free The Children this past Spring with a cheque for $8469.19 to go towards school building in Haiti. Congratulations St. Albert the Great!

Did you know that it only takes $25 in pennies to give clean water to one person for life? Join us as We Create Change and collect pennies in your own school, home or workplace. Sign up at www.freethechildren.com/wecreatechange