With jelly bean counts and some help from the “heavier” teachers, 10 students at High Tech High School raised money to improve the lives of two people in India.
For the past three weeks a student group under the leadership of faculty member John Pluchino collected $200 for Enterprise Development International, an organization that loans money to start small businesses in the Third World.
“We had two raffles in the mall of the school,” said Pluchino. “We had a jelly bean guessing contest and the winner came pretty close. There were 500 beans in the container, and the winner guessed 490.”
The second contest raised money by having participants guess the weight of two of the “heavier” teachers in the school, and of one student.
“We had a lot of enthusiastic participation from the students,” Pluchino stated. “The winners guessed the weight right on the head.”
While $200 does not seem like much, it is worth a great deal to its recipients in India. For a family living on between 75 cents and a dollar a day, the money used to start a self-sufficient business can mean a substantial increase in income, according to EDI representative Philip Chalk.
The $200 will be sent to EDI, which then gives the money to its Indian partner Christian Service Society. It will go as loans for the purchase of a rickshaw and a sewing machine. Under normal circumstances, a rickshaw driver or sewing machine operator would have to rent their machines on a daily basis, leaving little money to support a family.
Pluchino, a radio broadcasting teacher at High Tech’s radio station WHIT for 12 years, first heard of EDI from his sister Dianne, who works for the organization.
“It looked like a good link for the radio station,” explained Pluchino. “We do a lot of activities and we were looking for a place where our money would be best used.”
After getting permission from the school principal, Pluchino and a group of 10 students began their fund raising efforts in March and finished their work last week.
“We plan to keep the connection with EDI,” Pluchino said. “We won’t be able to do anything until to school year starts again September, everything is finishing up right now.”
A carnival is one possibility Pluchino is looking at for the future. He definitely wants to raise more money next time around.
“We would like to raise the bar and raise more than $200,” Pluchino said. “Parental involvement and community outreach is something we are going to look at, also.”