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Sunrise students raise funds for ‘Coldest Night’ while duct taping principal to gym wall

Kids’ project raised funds for Cloverdale Community Kitchen

A trio of students at Sunrise Ridge Elementary School helped raise more than $1,000 for the Cloverdale Community Kitchen.

The three kids decided to use a school project to raise money for the Coldest Night of the Year fundraising initiative.

“My mom introduced me to Coldest Night last year,” said student Ishana Dosanjh. “I thought it was a good cause.”

So Dosanjh, along with fellow students Trinity Courtney and Nehchal Sekhon, started the fundraising project to share that “good cause” with the rest of the school so they could all help the wider community.

The first thing they had to do was figure out how they’d garner pledges.

“To get the school to donate, we had to come up with a way for people to donate,” explained Dosanjh.

She said that was when they came up with the idea for one-dollar donations. For each Loonie pledged, kids and teachers would get a strand of duct tape and the whole school would get to duct tape their principal, Leona Brennan, to a gym wall. (See video below.)

“We raised more than thousand dollars,” said Dosanjh.

”It’s pretty impressive,” added teacher Holly Dickinson. “I think the whole thing is fantastic. These girls lead this all on their own. They went above and beyond, I think, what their own expectations were.”

The project was part of something Dickinson calls “Genius Hour.” It’s block of time the kids have each week to work on bigger projects that they’re passionate about.

“They made flyers. They were doing announcements,” Dickinson said.

“When we decided to do Coldest Night, we were doing it for the community,” added Courtney.

Courtney said when the trio focussed on Coldest Night for their Genius Hour project, they thought it would be a great way to raise awareness about those in need, but also about the responsibility to donate and to help others.

When the day finally came to do the walk and to tape their principal to the wall, kids in the school were excited.

After the principal Brennan was taped to a wall, all staff and students did a Coldest Night walk through the neighbourhood around Sunrise school.



editor@cloverdalereporter.com

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Malin Jordan

About the Author: Malin Jordan

Malin is the editor of the Cloverdale Reporter.
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