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Camas Prairie Elementary Students Collect Pennies for Charity
Celebrate!Spanaway partners with the students for community improvements

See a penny, pick it up, and all day long you'll have good luck!

The students at Camas Prairie Elementary did more than bring good luck with their 2007/2008 Penny Harvest campaign. They collected 1,000 pounds of the copper coins and turned them into cash for local non-profit service groups.

"The Penny Harvest focuses on a penny because it's something that everyone has access to and can participate in, even those less affluent," said Maryellen Ferro, program coordinator for the Seattle area Penny Harvest office. Fifty-five schools in Washington State took part in the 2008 campaign and together raised more than nine tons of pennies, totaling $64,333.73. Most of the money goes back to the local community.

Camas Prairie sixth grade teacher Ediena (Dena) Parker-Gursky heard about the Penny Harvest campaign from her daughter, who works for the parent organization in New York City. Gursky started the penny gathering campaign at Camas Prairie with the help of parent volunteer and co-coach Shannon Gregory.

"Last fall we formed a group of student leaders to get the school excited about the Penny Harvest," said Gregory. Interested fourth, fifth, and sixth graders developed job skills as they wrote resumes and were interviewed to become one of 20 members of the Penny Harvest Roundtable, the Camas Prairie campaign's governing body.

The Roundtable surveyed each class at Camas Prairie about problems the students wanted to work on. "We were surprised that graffiti and litter were high on their list," said Gursky. "To put it in the kids' language, the said it made their neighborhoods ugly." The students were also upset about all the trees being stripped from the land for housing and commercial developments. "You don't expect children so young to notice and be concerned about such things, but they are," Gursky added.

After gathering their coins, the student Roundtable researched local charities and generated a list of probing questions. Then they invited several agencies for an in-person interview. "We were very impressed by how mature and pfoessional these young people were in conducting the interview, and by their desire to clean up Spanaway and make it the good place it can be," said Joyce Swanson a co-founder of Celebrate!Spanaway, an all-volunteer, community improvement council, one of the non-profit agencies selected for interview.

At a celebration rally on June 10 at Camas Prairie Elementary, the students turned their penny change into checks for their chosen charities, giving PAWS, the Progressive animal Welfare Society, $500 to shelter homeless animals and rehabilitate injured and orphaned wildlife. Youth Resources was awarded $500 in cash and $200 worth of personal hygiene supplies for Spanaway's homeless teen housing and drop-in center. Tacoma Area Coalition of Individuals with Disabilities (TACID), which promotes independence for those with disabilites, received $300. The Companionship program for children with special needs was given $100.

The students selected the Celebrate!Spanaway Committee to help with their plan for "community beautification." Besides planning a litter cleanup campaign in the next school term, the Roundtable allocated $500 to plant more trees along Pacific Avenue in Spanaway and $300 to place a concrete bench and plant a tree in a spot park at the Hidden Village housing development, where many of the students live.

Penny Harvest got its start when four-year-old Nora Gross saw a homeless person on the street and wanted to do something to help. She and her father founded the non-profit Common Sense and began the penny collecting campaign. Now 21, Nora Gross said, "We give the youngest of all people the chance to look into their communities, see problems and ask questions, and then answer them with the creativity, sensitivity, and generosity that come so naturally to children - and all this using the loose change that no one seems to miss at all."

Visit Penny Harvest to learn more about the Puget Sound campaign.

See a penny? Pick it up!
Save it for the Camas Prairie Elementary's 2008/2009 Penny Harvest Campaign.