No Help is Too Small

Mommy Amiga (MommA) head Wilma Huang shares the amazing stories of generosity she witnessed through the Everest Academy iCan Change for Change campaign- A fundraising campaign that encouraged the Everest community to save their loose change in order to help provide scholarships for the students in Mano Amiga Academy.

Mommy Amiga (MommA) would like to thank everyone who supported the school’s iCan Change for Change campaign launch last week.   In just four days, we were able to give out all of our 300 “piggybank” cans to students, teachers and parents who wanted to support the Scholarship Fund for our sister school, Mano Amiga.   Several students even came back after the first day of our launch to return their filled cans and to ask for more cans!   Until now, we continue to receive inquiries if we will have more cans as some students and parents are saying their cans are almost filled.   We will try our best to get more cans from San Miguel Yamamura, which had generously produced these special cans for us in support of our campaign.

 

If there is one thing my fellow MommAs and I can say we witnessed last week, it is this :  the spirit of kindness and generosity is truly alive in our Everest students!   Day after day, the filled cans just kept coming in (along with requests for more cans).  In fact, when we packed up our table last Friday, we had collected already 34 filled cans!  And throughout these four days, we heard stories that truly touched our hearts.  There was a grade 3 boy who’s been saving his allowance for a Ninjago Lego set.  He had asked his parents to explain what the iCan Change for Change campaign was all about.  When he was told it was to help raise funds to put underprivileged children in Mano Amiga to school, his parents were surprised when he started to put all the money he had saved in his can.   Asked why he decided to give up the money he’s been saving, unhesitatingly he replied that he wanted the kids from Mano Amiga to go to school more than his Ninjago Lego set.  And there was another boy in grade 6 who kept coming back for 3 straight days, giving us his filled cans.  We learned that when his mom discovered he had emptied out his piggybank at home, she had asked him where all the money went.  He told her that it was for charity and it was “the right thing to do”.

 

Thanksgiving will soon be celebrated in the U.S.  And while it’s not a Filipino holiday or tradition, we at Mommy Amiga would like to give our heartfelt thanks to our school for allowing us to have this campaign, and to our students who stepped up and showed what giving is all about … that it’s not the amount that you give that matters, but the willingness to share with others what you have.