The biggest gift of all - with a little help from chocolate

by Tauna
(Texas)

I'm with the Friendship Baptist Church in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. A few years back we held a fundraiser to help out an above average citizen. Sarah Edwards hosted a foster home for as long as anybody could remember.

One chilly night in October of 2005, Ms Edwards home caught on fire and everything was lost. Years worth of pictures the children had drawn, memories of her child-hood were all gone. Everybody was able to get of the home unharmed, but she had two children that were physically handi-capped, and they lost their wheelchairs in the fire.

We all togather at the church and decided that we needed to help rebuild Ms Edwards home. We spread the story and gots dozens of sponsors but we still needed to raise $30,000. We decided to go the candy bar route because just about everybody enjoys chocolate.

Luckily Tuscaloosa is a football town and we have thousands of extra people in town for home games. We decided to make this our strategy, we would bombard the football staduim, parking areas and anywhere else on campus to sell our candy. We'd also printed up little cards describing our cause and attached them to the candy bars so people would know there was a reason.

Somehow we got some local coverage on the nightly news about Friendship Baptist raising money for Mr. Edwards. The next morning, the phones were blowing up with people wanting to know where they could purchase candy bars.

So we came up with all $30,000, some of our sponsors included contractors, electricians, roofers, plumbers - all the people needed to construct a house came togather and within 2 months had rebuilt her home. In addition to our efforts, the Maxwell Elementary school also raised money to help purchase brand new wheelchairs for the handicapped children.

So never underestimate the power of chocolate and the love of a town.