MAKING A DIFFERENCE: ‘What we wanted to do’

Malvern youngsters engage community for charities

By BY WAYNE BRYAN Staff Writer

TRI-LAKES AREA — Most teachers are quick to point out the importance of parents supporting their students’ educational pursuits.

For Sarah Totten of Malvern, her educational pursuits are helping support one of her parents.

When Sarah and friends Olivia Johnson and Madison Henry picked their mission as part of an Environmental And Spatial Technology project at Malvern Elementary, the third graders selected to help the Multiple Sclerosis Association of America. The choice was an easy one because Sarah’s father, James, has been diagnosed with MS, a disease that attacks the nervous system.

“It was what we wanted to do,” 8-year-old Olivia said. “I have always cared about MS because of her dad.”

Sarah and Olivia have been lifelong friends. During their campaign, they have come to school early to sell pencils, erasers and notebooks to raise funds. The attention is now on holding a bake sale and yard sale at the school’s cafeteria on Saturday.

“I think this will help my dad and help other people to get medicines that will help them,” said Sarah, 9.

The girls created fliers asking for baked items and merchandise for the sale and distributed them to the 900 students in the school and to every staff member in the Malvern School District.

After Olivia’s mother submitted a story about the project, they began to receive items and promises of baked treats from throughout the community. Sarah’s mother said a business where she was shopping recognized her and the proprietor took money from the cash register for a donation to the campaign.

But Sarah and Olivia aren’t the only students using their precocious brains to make an impact in their community. Brigette Allen teaches 39 students in three EAST classes at Malvern Elementary and said the EAST program is a lot more than just getting to use high-tech equipment.

“We are teaching students that they personally can make a difference,” Allen said. “The class finds problems in their school and community and uses the technology to see if they can find solutions.”

Allen said her third- and fourth-grade students are plenty old enough to start learning those lessons.

“These are gifted and talented students,” she said. “They are nominated by parents or teachers and then are selected through a testing process.”

This year the class divided into groups and selected organizations and charities that they could help through campaigns the students would devise.

Those projects and their results will be presented to the community during a Charity Fair on Monday, Nov. 30, at the school.

The 12 community projects range from collecting soup can labels to redeem for a Wii electronic game system for the school gym and collecting pop tabs for the Ronald McDonald House in Little Rock, to a Teddy Bears for Cops campaign where students have collected more than 400 stuffed animals that Malvern Police officers can give to children during a traumatic event such as auto accidents.

Other projects include collecting more than 100 books from classmates after the students made presentations and gave brochures to each Malvern Elementary class. Another collected pet supplies for an animal shelter and is organizing an adoption event.

“The students have selected their projects, planned them out and produced fliers and made the calls to agencies and organizations,” Malvern Elementary School Principal Meredith McCormack said. “The students are responsible for all that.”

The lessons learned far exceed the technology that enables the students. Tasks such as writing correspondence to the aid organizations, taking inventory of items collected or counting out change or daily sales receipts is part of the experience.

“They also learn that things don’t always work out the way you want them to and how to best respond to that,” Allen said.

Sarah and Olivia learned how to respond to adversity early in their project when sales of the pencils and other items were slow. But as time for the bake and yard sales grew close and the Charity Fair was announced, sales have increased, Sarah said.

For the fair, Allen said the teams of students will have booths to explain and promote their projects.

“There will be brochures they have made, and each group has name slides for a Power Point presentation that will run and they will be talking to the visitors about their projects,” Allen said. “It is all the students, I just keep them on task.”

For more information about the projects, to make a donation or to attend the Charity Fair, call Malvern Elementary School at (501) 467-3166.

- wbryan@arkansasonline.com

Tri-Lakes, Pages 57 on 11/05/2009