My name is Michelle Schaefer and I run a home childcare called Sugar-N-Spice.  My middle daughter was ill so I bought her "Chicken Soup for the Teenage soul" to read while she recovered.  she read a story about a little girl in California that had raised money to buy bulletproof vests for the police K-9 dogs.  She shared the story with the other school age children in my childcare and they asked me if they could try.  When they presented the idea to me I honestly did not think it could be done, so I told them to write their goal (how many vests, how much money, ways to make the money).  They came back with $7,000.00 for 22 vests and would put donation boxes in area business, if I agreed to drive them to drop off boxes and pick up money.  Again I did not think they could do it, so I told them to write up a script and they had to call the business themselves.  They decided to stick to vets, pet stores and Groomers.  They started making the calls and to my amazement the stores started saying yes.  So we started collecting boxes and covering them with wrapping paper, the kids printed up flyers and pasted them to the boxes.  When the money started coming in we decided to get a bank account.  One of the daycare mom's worked at fifthird so she set that up for us.  One day an employee from Papa Johns saw the flyer and called the kids to see what they could do to help.  A representative from Papa Johns helped us set up car washes.  the kids went to the mall and out of their own money had T-shirts airbrushed with the name Kids For K-9's.  Well before I knew it we were on the Fox 59 news, they had a surprise for us Iams (the pet food company) donated 1000.00!  When people heard this they started to mail us checks!  We were also in our local paper, the Indianapolis star, Channel 8 and 13.  Zoom even came out and did a show.  At the end of the summer (only one summer) the kids had raised all the money.  Papa Johns held a pizza party for the officers and every TV station came for the presentation of the vests.  Then the mayor of Lawrence called and had the kids to the mayors office and presented them with the KEY TO THE CITY!  Again I did not think the kids would be able to follow this through (don't you love being proved wrong).  After looking back they learned so many valuable lessons from this, the police kept saying over and over how it was nice because most kids don't have the respect they use to like they have for the fireman.  We are looking for our next community involvement project I incorporate this into all of them because I feel it is so important.  The sense of accomplishment these kids got was more important than all the attention (they really didn't see why all us adults were making such a fuss).  It has been about 3 years and they still talk about it like it was yesterday.  It also opened the door for other opportunities some of the kids went on to volunteer at the Indianapolis Children's Museum one of them now writes articles for the star (through Y-Press).  Now that I know the ropes and better what to do, I know that this next project whatever it is will be successful and I will NEVER doubt my kids again.  Although I do think that was some of the motivation to prove me wrong. LOL.  What a life lesson and memory all it took was a little of my weekend time and gas.  It was well worth it and I challenge Everybody to raise these little ones with the spirit of community service, after all we all are in this crazy life journey together.

 

Just a added note, if sight and sound was in effect this would have never happened.  The kids had to go to a bedroom with the door closed to make the phone calls, so that they could hear over the little ones.  They had to do the boxes and roll the change in the kitchen while me and the lil ones were in the living room so that no one was hurt by scissors or choking on change.

 

Michelle