Fraser students collect donations for Children’s Hospital

FRASER — Several students from Edison Elementary School have been collecting donations for Children’s Hospital of Michigan as part of a project to better their world.

Fourth grade teacher Tina Frazier said the marathon project is a six-week endeavor and that it is the second time she has helped with it. It is a part of the Social Studies Olympiad, which is a regional competition.

Levi Keil, a fourth grade student, said they started the project in November with the planning stage. After Christmas, Keil said, they started calling businesses and collecting donations. So far, the group of 11 students has collected approximately $1,200 and a lot of toys.

The participating fourth grade students are Keil, Liliana Ruhl, Landon Cantrell, Carter Peace, Valentino Richardson, Jonah Stewart, Kaylee Storey, Lydia Hogan, Shylee Arredondo, Ben Golick and James Maison.

The students will give the toys and donations they’ve collected to the children at Children’s Hospital of Michigan on March 19. The band director will reportedly lend them a trailer for the delivery.

Approximately 15 businesses have gotten involved in the project, Frazier said. She said the kids were coming up with new businesses to call.

“All the businesses have been willing and excited to help us with our project so it’s been nice to see what the community is doing to help out as well,” Frazier said. “We’ve got a lot of support from around our community and in our school as well.”

Collection boxes were placed inside businesses for patrons and others to put toys in. Maison said he thinks the restaurants that are more visited received more donations.

Students also have to complete a scrapbook for the project and everything must be submitted by the beginning of April.

“With spring break we needed to make sure we were finished, or almost finished, before then and then just use those couple weeks in April to just do a little tweaking of the project,” Frazier said.

Each student had a specific role to complete. Some of these tasks include making phone calls, designing thank you cards and posters and more.

They also hosted pencil and bracelet sales in the elementary school and they have plans to extend that sale to the Fraser High School.

Frazier said most of the money they collected came from the school district.

“A teacher at the high school, they gave us $10 and they wanted to buy 10 bracelets,” Keil said.

The students also completed projects at home to raise money for the project. Keil collected returnable cans to raise money.

“Beyond what we’re doing here, they’re taking it back (home) and getting their families involved, too,” Frazier said.

She added a lot of parents had posted on social media to collect donations.

Arredondo said she emailed a person at the hospital for check-ins. Frazier added the hospital has a list of specific “wants” to avoid product recalls.

“They want us to avoid dollar-store-type (toys) and get more of the big brand names like Little Tikes and things like that just because they don’t have as many recalls,” Frazier said.

During the planning stages, the students came up with a lot of ideas to better their world. Some of the kids in the group had ties to the hospital. Maison said he’s been to the hospital.

“That was easy for them to pick this project out of all the other ones that they looked at because so many of them have been affected by something that have led them or their family to the hospital,” Frazier said.

Storey said they came up with a few ideas including helping with animal rescue, but ultimately chose the Children’s Hospital.

The fourth graders had a wide variety of favorite things they did for the project. They said it was a good experience and that they’d do it again.

“Dropping off stuff and seeing that people were donating,” Ruhl said.

“Seeing smiles on the kids’ faces,” Richardson said.

“Seeing people giving money to make the world a better place,” Stewart said.

“My favorite part was seeing (us) dropping off the boxes,” Hogan said.

“My favorite part is probably us bettering our world,” Arredondo said.

“My favorite part was probably calling the businesses,” Golick said.

Frazier said she is immensely proud of her students.

“The determination that they have to make the world better for people that they don’t know is amazing,” Frazier said. “It’s been nice watching them through that.”