They circled the room quickly, grabbing a toothbrush, the right-sized sweatshirt and snacks.
The students in the Helping Hands Club at Webb Elementary School were on a mission. They had visited a local nonprofit organization that helps homeless and at-risk students and young adults. Their teacher had gotten a grant to buy supplies to make care packages.
The students had been shopping and spent nearly every dollar.
Now it was time to build the packages for children and young adults who are or will seek help from KIC-IT (Kids In Crisis Intervention Team). Cold weather was coming.
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Click here to purchase photos from this galleryThis was but one project that the club of 20 or so students has tackled so far this year. Each month, the Helping Hands Club, organized by teacher Jenni Bartram, takes on a new service learning project. They’ve made chemo care kits for children at Riley Hospital for Children at Indiana University Health, greeted people at a dinner fundraiser for the Relay for Life and made “copcorn” for Franklin police officers for Thank A Cop day in September.
November’s project focused on homelessness and was supposed to include a visit to KIC-IT’s drop-in center, where students could ask questions, meet a student in need and put a face to the issue. They read the book “Fly Away Home” to learn what homelessness looks like, Bartram said.
But the more the students and Bartram learned, the more they wanted to do. That’s when they learned that their packages would be passed out at the nonprofit’s annual Thanksgiving meal.
The Helping Hands group got involved and hosted the meal at the Franklin elementary school this week. The 19 students helped serve Webb and KIC-IT families the free meal after raising money to put it on.
The students set up the meal, helped serve, cleaned up and read Thanksgiving poems.
“I like to help people and help them feel comfortable,” fourth-grader Edgar Tisdale said.
Lilly McGrath, 9, said she wanted to be involved in this project because it is important for homeless people to feel comfortable.
The overriding urge from the class was that they wanted to help.
“Even if it is someone I don’t know,” Danica Mayer, 9, said.
The club gets help from Grace United Methodist Church, which donated $200 for the meal.
The children also sold candy-grams for 25 cents each during Halloween to raise money. They collected $140.
That’s a lot of candy-grams.
The club was first organized three years ago for the older elementary students, Bartram said, and it has been incredibly rewarding and helped the students, as well. For example, a pancake breakfast previously helped raise money for Kaleb Buck’s battle against cancer.
“Even those kids who kind of struggle in class academically, and you think to yourself as a teacher, ‘Am I reaching them?’ and they come to this club and you get to see a different side of them, and their caring hearts, and what they want to do for others,” Bartram said.
“It’s pretty special.”
