Always keep these points in mind.
Teachers - find help and encouragement here ...
Transform someone's outlook... A pair of spectacles could mean a much easier life for 200 million people in the developing world. Start a collection program and highlight it with a great photo op. for the newspapers - get each child to make a pair of cardboard Austin Powers glasses and get the whole school parade, even the teachers, wearing them. Lions Recycle for Sight is a good starting point.
Fight childhood cancer, one cup at a time. www.alexslemonade.org Alex's Lemonade Stand provides a meaningful, fun, and safe way to make a difference in the lives of others. As Alex once said, "holding your own Alex's Lemonade Stand is easy and fun!" It is also an inspiring way for caring people of all ages to support a cause dedicated to helping children everywhere. Link up with other THUMB schools and pool your money for great publicity.
Wristbands are a way of showing you support a particular cause. Design your own. Try to get a celebrity to wear yours. Alternatively use them as a reward to help modify student behaviour. Make it really cool and desirable. Start looking here for design ideas. www.wristbands.com.au
Make 201? your Year of Change Make a daily school calender where you have 1 thing to do every day, one thing that improves your school community. Small things like The word 'shut up' is banned from our school today. Let the students contribute ideas and make it part of weekly parades.
25 Days and 25 Ways to Make A Difference Challenge your students, teachers and parents to make a difference every day, for 25 days, and use the THUMB money to provide encouragement awards. Better still, start a school blog and take your school's ambition global. Follow the lead of this inspirational 10 year old.
People with disabilities could use your help. Identify a problem in your area that a person with a mental or physical disability might encounter.
For many cancer patients, the worst part of chemotherapy is losing their hair. www.locksoflove.org provides hairpieces to children in North America 18 or younger who are suffering any form of medical hair loss and are in financial need. Anyone can donate their hair, from anywhere. Minimum 25 cm hair length. Most hair donated comes from children wishing to help other children. Have a mass haircut day. The TV cameras would love this.
Collect Tools. Giving a tool enables people to make a living for themselves in places like Papua New Guinea and East Timor or wherever they are needed. Tools for Self Reliance will put you on the right path. Join forces with a hardware company. Offer a free car wash for Saturday morning customers while they shop. In return they assist you in getting good reliable tools.
The organizations listed here were started and are run by kids. They had ideas for projects to help their communities and those projects then grew into organizations. The ages by their names are how old they were when they started their organizations.
This is a primary school project from another good Australian orginization called RuMAD.
Video Game Tournament Organize a video game tournament (football, PlayStation) with heats and a prize for the winner. Get students to "sponsor" entrants by pledging "kms" or "oval laps" they will walk or run. Improve your schools attitude to health and fitness in a fun way.
Toilets - you've got one but half the world's people have no access to any kind of toilet. This a major health issue.
Parents Night Out Organize an evening to provide babysitting for parents in your community to enjoy a night on the town without the kids. Gather a group of responsible friends to babysit kids in one location and organize fun activities. Parents can drop their kids off and know they are being watched in exchange for a donation.
BOOKS BOOKS BOOKS - Mix up some of these ideas:
Blooms for Profit Purchase flowers at your local supermarket or marketplace and bring them to a graduation ceremony, sporting event, concert, etc.. Sell the flowers for more than you paid and use the money to do something for your school.
Radio can help children learn. How can you listen to the radio if you have no source of power like millions around the world. The clockwork radio! A gift of just 1 radio can make a positive difference to a family, a classroom or a whole community. Through the Freeplay Foundation it costs just A$82 to donate a radio. Get a local radio station on board and let everyone know what your school is doing.
Use eBay to raise funds. Get the school community to donate unwanted goods. Establish a team of eBay junkies to sell the goods. Involve maths and writing.
A few thoughts: With the milk of human kindness there should be no such thing as skim Hard work spotlights the character of people; some turn up their sleeves, some turn up their noses, some don’t turn up at all.
Encourage young writers to submit an article about your project to Amazing Kids! online magazine. It's all about inspiring excellence in children. This is a quality, not for profit group. This is a USA site so add a few references to Kookaburras watching from the gum trees and they will love it.
Can your school come up with a clever plan to stop the barrage of junk mail within your area?
Can your school increase the number of people in your area to take their own shopping bags to the supermarket?
Don't be frightened of failure Do something, and try your best to succeed. But even if you don't, you will have shown that you care enough to want to do something, you will probably have made some difference, and you and your students will have learnt a lot from the experience - which you can put into practice next time.
Make a big change with your small change Start a public awareness campaign to collect all that loose change in your community.
SIGN UP Can your school be known as the one that graduates every student with the ability to communicate with a profoundly deaf person? Go to www.auslan.org.au to start your new ethos of social inclusion.
Make a school compost heap and sell the resultant mulch. Study the food chain for science, measure percentages of waste for maths, involve the community in your school. Go to www.mastercomposter.com
Promoting Tolerance within the school community. Look here for classroom activities and ideas www.tolerance.org
What about raising money for your own school? Some fresh fete ideas...
Decide on a message, find a wall, paint a mural
Buy each student a bottle of spring water. Once they've drunk it fill their bottles with tap water. Over the period of a week calculate how much you have saved. www.wateraid.org
Promote Tolerance and Understanding in your school by having a
Raising water ... in a roundabout way. The PlayPump is a South African invention that uses the playful energies of children rotating a roundabout to raise water. Have a water carrying relay at your school's sports day to highlight that many girls and boys walk many kms everyday to fetch water. Get your local member involved and they are sure to get some media coverage for you. www.roundabout.co.za www.pumpaid.org www.hipporoller.org Maybe design your own school water fetching olympics. Donate money and raise awareness.
Invest in young people Children living on the streets need to earn money just to survive. Many do this by begging or rag-picking. But it is difficult for them to keep the money they earn safe, and therefore impossible for them to create a better future for themselves. In Dehli, a group of street children started their own bank and amazingly it is entirely run by children. The bank gives children the chance to do something safer. For example, 2 boys started a mobile tea business. They strapped an urn to the back of a bicycle and sold tea to lines of taxi drivers who were waiting to refuel their vehicles. Raise some funds to help establish new children's banks. www.childrensdevelopmentbank.org www.childsavingsinternational.org.org
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