Centre Grey Health Services Foundation thanks the wonderful students and staff of Holland-Chatsworth School for their donation of $500. The money was raised through a very interesting program entitled “Give, Save, Spend”. Grade 6 student Cailyn Perry tells us more about the program in the article below.

Holland Chatsworth Central School has been working on teaching the students of the school about “give, save, and spend”. Give, save, spend teaches kids about how to give some money to other people and charities, save some money for the future and spend some money on immediate ‘wants’.

In order to teach the students of HCCS about giving, saving and spending, the school decided to engage in a school Night Out, where students from grades 4-8 have the chance to sleep over at the school for one night. The students would have an opportunity to Tie Dye shirts, play games in the gym, a variety of art activities, watch a movie and eventually settle down to sleep on the gym floor. This simulates the experience of how some people are without the basic necessity of a bed and shelter. The way the night out would work is that in order for the students to participate in this event they would have to raise a minimum of thirty dollars, when the money was raised the school would donate 1/3 of the donations to the Markdale Hospital, 1/3 would be saved for trips and other school equipment, and 1/3 would be spent on sports and music equipment.

The night out took place on the 21st of November. The night started out when all of the other kids left for home and the students participating in the night out met in the library to play games and do homework later we met back in the library followed by supper, which consisted of lasagna and bread served by a couple dedicated parent council members. After we had a short presentation and presented a cheque to the Markdale hospital for five hundred dollars.

Because of the 38 people that stayed over at the night out our school was able to raise a total of $1500 and one third of that money went towards the Markdale hospital. It just goes to show you that helping can be fun and easy and that a small difference can go along way to helping people in our community.

By: Cailyn Perry, Grade 6