Show & Tell: Date Night With A Cause

Good morning Humble Readers!

The company I work for puts a big emphasis on giving back to the community. Our in-house charity supports children's literacy. Every year, for the last five years, we have been able to distribute 1.5 million dollars among high needs elementary schools to help rebuild their libraries. Most of that money comes from the store level, donations provided by our customers and from our staff.

Here are some statistics for you (Canadian stats)... back in the day, when I was in elementary school, a school received $27 per student per year to buy new books and resources for their library. Today the average school receives $3 per student per year. Teachers invest an obscene amount of their own money in resources for their classrooms, and only 13% of Canadian public schools have a full time librarian. And the most shocking piece of info about this situation... if we increase the literacy rate in our country by just 1%, that will equal an $18.4 billion (yes, billion) boost for our economy. (One other piece of info that I don't recall the exact numbers on but is shocking nonetheless... the population of Canada's peneteniaries is more than 70% functionally illiterate!) Inspiring kids to read, and providing great resources for them is key for our coutry to continue to move forward.

So what does this have to do with our date night?

Well, one of my responsibilities at work is to come up with ways that we can fundraise for this project. I'm happy to say that my staff is really really gung-ho on this, and since April we have raised more than $10K, doing things like running lemonade stands, soliciting donations from our customers, and most recently a penny drive.

For the months of June-August we collected loose change. Pretty simple, right? We had a 5 gallon water jug more than half full of change. And last week my Beloved and I counted and rolled all that change!

We spent more than four hours on Friday night sorting, counting and rolling all that coin. My Beloved then spent a large chunk of Saturday rolling while I was at work the next day. All totalled we raised $340 in loose change. My Beloved did the math and we had more than 11,000 pennies.

And let me tell you... money is dirty! Check out the difference in my hands.

Don't forget to swing by Mel's place to check out what the rest of the class is showing this week!