Cookies for Cleanup

by Daniel Sands
(Lawndale, CA)

There is a beautiful place in Alaska called Valdez, it is about three hours east of Anchorage. I used to work summers up there while in college and every single time I was astonished about the beauty of the place, yet I was not the only one.

Even though the place was beautiful, years ago during the Exxon Valdez spill, some of the areas around the shore had leftover from the spill such as rocks showing oil on them and miles long of small beach stone all blackened by the spill, I knew there was something that had to be done so I got involved with the local youth program and we decided to have a cookie dough fundraiser in order to raise money for gear, transportation and material for volunteers to have a clean-up day around the beach.

We posted fliers at the local school and got announced in the local radio informing people of the fundraiser and its cause. We also got most of the kidīs parents involved, this is really important since all the information can go around by word of mouth, we also tried to advertise on the local newspaper but since we were kids we had no money and the newspaper was going to charge us, this is a good idea when funding is available.

So we held the cookie fundraiser at the local community center on Saturday and it was a total success, we raised over $300.00 and for us this was more than enough, we all worked so hard and each one of us brought a little something different to it. Of course we could have made more but we didnīt have enough stock, there was so much we could still raise but we surely didnīt know people were going to be so interested.

I attribute our success in the work of mouth that our parents had with all the community and thank them for their supervision all along the way, remember we were just kids but with what a big heart and desire to preserve nature and its resources.