Small Ideas Can Make a Huge Difference
I'm a single parent of a 5 year old boy living in California. My son was starting his first year of school, kindergarten. He had been waiting for this all summer. He was so excited to finally go to school and be around other kids, do projects, arts, learn, and play.
His school allows parents to donate their time by coming in the class and helping out the teachers and kids for the day. I volunteered toward the beginning of the school year and was brought back to see the condition of so many things in the classroom. The kids were using used writing tools from the year before, old beat up toys, and there was no updated learning equipment.
They say kids gain there foundation for life within the first 5 years. I wanted these kindergartners to have a stimulating learning environment. Something they could be excited about. After discussing my concerns w/ the teachers and other parents we decided to do a online auction fundraiser.
We sent home flyers with all the kids in the kindergarten classrooms asking there parents to collect anything that may be able to be auctioned through eBay. We also put flyers around the neighborhood asking the community for the same thing.
Well that's all it took was to simply ask the people in our community for help and the donations came flying in. People gave us all kinds of stuff they no longer had use for, things that had probably been lying around the house collecting dust.
Well our "junk" was the eBay'ers treasure. A 10 day eBay auction got all of our stuff sold. It was so simple.
After the auction was over we were able to use the profits to purchase brand new school supplies for the kids, learning toys and a computer.
The young kids need to be excited about school and have a want to learn. Well having this new stuff accomplished that. We were able to start a great foundation for the kids education.