Choose Your Charity...

Last term our Year 4s had a market day, one of my absolute favourite days of the year! With their powers combined (like the Captain Planet team...oh side note Captain Planet the movie is apparently being made! I've been prediciting this for yeaaaaaars!) they raised around $1400! Go Team!

It's tradition for our Year foursies to give 10% of what they raise to a charity, of their collective choice.
Last year they gave to our sister school in the Philippines and the year before to the girl who used to work in our office and now works with sex-slaves in Greece. I love seeing the cause that arouses the hearts of our little people.

Our current Year 4s have had a few weeks to mull over who/what they wanted to support this year and today was decision day! We started with a brainstorm... I love that each kid had a story behind why they chose a particular charity... one girl chose the orphanage her brothers came from, another chose a cancer related charity because her mum just had a throat cancer removed, one boy chose a children's hospital in Melbourne because he had seen it on BTN (oh don't get me started on how much I love BTN).

We wrote all of these up and then had a vote.... and the winner was 'Sumatran Tigers'. Over a third of the kids felt compelled to help the endangered animals from Sumatra. I am still to figure out how this became such a passion of theirs. But I love that it is! Of course some staff were annoyed that we let them support an animal, rather than helping the orphans or something, and to some degree I agree...but as the kids said 'they are God's creation and it's not fair that they are not being looked after!'

The four boys who suggested Sumatran tigers in the first place had the job of finding a charity we could donate to. (When they found 'adopt a tiger' they got slightly concerned as to where we would keep it...um)
We decided on going through Taronga, the zoo we camped at last month, and the boys wrote this email...

To whom it may concern:

(our school's) Year 4 students would like to donate to help the Sumatran  tigers.

We recently had a fundraiser for our Junior School Graduation and have decided to spend 10% of what we raised on a charity. This is $140.

Most of Year 4 students voted to help the Sumatran tigers because they are God’s creation and they don’t deserve to die. We feel sad that the tigers are not being taken care of and that they may become extinct. We hope that our money can help provide food for them and help to restore their environment.

Can you tell us where to donate the money so it will best help the tigers?

From P, L, J and E

On behalf of Year 4 at(our school)

Super sweet hey!

In the process of researching Sumatran tiger charities, the boys also decided they wanted to make a powerpoint presentation (of course!) to show the other students why it is so important to help these creatures. I may have to help them edit it before they show Kindergarten gruesome images of mistreated animals, but I so admire their initiative!

Oh I am sad that I only have 29 more school days with these beautiful kids before they head...all the way up the hill to Middle School. :-)