West Ferris Secondary School students present the Lions Club with a check for $14,702 they raised during a penny drive for their efforts in rebuilding Sri Lanka.
West Ferris Secondary School students present the Lions Club with a check for $14,702 they raised during a penny drive for their efforts in rebuilding Sri Lanka.
As the federal government toys with the idea of eliminating the penny, students of West Ferris Secondary School found 14,702 reasons why they shouldn’t.
The students, with help from their junior schools, have been collecting and rolling pennies throughout the school year as phase two of their ongoing support of the Lion’s Club initiative to rebuild Sri Lankan villages devastated by the 2004 Tsunami.
The students started the penny drive in 2005 when they learned about the Lions Club House Building project during a World Religion class with their teacher, John Hetherington. The teacher hooked the students because he was able to give a first hand accounting of the devastation the country had experienced. In 2006 the students raised $5,423 during the penny drive and this year they nearly tripled the outcome.
“Six months after the tsunami hit I was in Sri Lanka for the second time. I was there in 2002, so, I saw a completely different Sri Lanka, that was completely intact along the coastline. And I went back in the summer 205 and saw that level of devastation, and then again, back last summer,” he states.
“But a great number of houses have been built, society is starting to put itself back together. The coastal roads being repaired, the rail lines back in. People have been moved back from the coastline, so that has all started to really take shape in the country.”
He says although there is no question that fundraising efforts around the tsunami have subsided, his students remain committed to the cause and the local Lions Club’s efforts. Hetherington says with the progress made in rebuilding the country they now refer to their efforts as Sri Lankan development not tsunami relief.
Don Beddage, Lions Club member and native Sri Lankan, said it was great to see the continuation of the project that the club started in 2005.
“In developing countries, the reason why things take so long to happen is that there is a lot of government involvement,” explains Beddage.
“But what we did as Lions, with the efforts of the school, is that we went directly to the Lions Club in Sri Lanka, so that there was no middleman involved.”
“It gives me great satisfaction to see the projects that we set out to do were completed. Not halfway, not three quarters of the way, they were completed in time, and people were moved into their homes.”
Hetherington says he finds the ability to talk to the students about important issues from his own experience keeps the students involved, and he hopes his students continue to help causes long after they leave high school.
“If I get pumped up about things, if I get passionate about things, a lot of the kids start getting passionate about it as well.”
“And it’s a sales job, but after the sales job is over, they realise now they are interested as well, and some of them actually, what to go to Sri Lanka.”
