This year, Steller Secondary School partnered with The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society’s  program to raise money to help fund research in finding cures and therapies.  Funding also provides patients and their families with information and support.

We asked students and their families to empty their coin jar, search couch cushions, check old pockets, and empty car coin stashes all in an attempt to put that spare change to good use – providing hope to those effected by blood cancers.

We set a school goal of $500 dollars and students got to work selling paper penny logos at lunch and bringing in spare change.  The paper penny logos slowly took over an entire wall. Students seemed to enjoy seeing which advisory group had the most logos.  Each day, a “Pennies for Patients Update” was written on our announcement board and included an interesting fact about coins or blood cancers, as well as updated fundraiser totals.  Several teachers got into the sprit of competition for a good cause, one teacher, Michelle Short, had her classes compete to win a free class period and watch the movie Pay It Forward while eating snacks; with her winning class hour raising nearly $200. It was great to see our students get excited about helping others; one student commented that even though their advisory group had not raised a lot of money, it felt good to give, even a little bit.

Our students really learned the power of a Penny, as we were able to raise $2,888.32, an impressive amount for a school of only 285 students.  A Pennies for Patients wrap-up assembly was held on April 15, 2008 to thank all of our students and staff for their hard work. Tyler Miller, a 7 year old student and honored patient, with Leukemia, talk with a few of our classes on April 29, 2009 and accepted a check in behalf of the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. When asked what he is going to do with the honorary check, Tyler said “I’m going to put it on the wall at the (Chemotherapy) clinic.”

Thanks again, to all of you who worked so hard and donated money to make this fundraiser so successful for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society! We felt our school did such a great job fundraising that we had to honor more than just the first place advisory group, so second and third place received ice cream floats.

Winning Advisory Groups:
Michelle & Gerald – $852.78 – Won a pizza party!
Shannon – $573.75 – Won an ice cream float party!
Nina – $367.85 – Won an ice cream float party!