Every year, around Valentine's Day, our school sells Heart-o-Grams for the Canadian Foundation for AIDS research. They're great, the foundation sends you everything (Boxes of red, pink & white Smarties, red ribbons (to pin on your shirt), pamphlets about AIDS, printed bags, and stickers which double as gift tags and hold the bags shut), and all you need to do is sell them. Last year in our tiny school (400 kids, grades 7-12), we raised 487$ last year. Anyway, kids buy the Heart-o-Grams for a dollar, but the best part of the campaign is the activities we do during the week we're selling them. Last year, we offered Valentine's Day candies to the first 50 people to buy them (we put up HUGE signs beforehand), one day we had a jelly bean guess jar (with red and white jelly beans of course), had penny wars, red ribbon day (students got ribbons when they bought Heart-o-Grams, and right after lunch, teachers gave draw tickets to those kids wearing ribbons, and by the end of the day, we had winners, and announced them over the intercom). Already gearing up for Valentine's Day 2002, we've got one male and one female teacher to agree to let us dye their hair for the cause. We'll have each teacher pick four colours, and have boxes in front of their pictures in those colours. Students vote with their change as to what colour the hair should be. The colour for each teacher with the most money at the end of the week gets it, and we’ll probably dye his or her hair at a pep rally. All the money is donated to AIDS research in Canada. We're aiming for about 2$/student this year...
Anastasia Kulpa