Putting the Fun in Fundraising

Want to know what students are up to these days? All you have to do is follow your nose. On March 22, the aroma of chocolate chip cookies still warm from the oven filled the hallways leading to the Whalers cafeteria. Marcie Crouch’s four culinary arts classes had spent two days baking no fewer than 2,099 cookies, which student volunteers then packed into bags tied with ribbon and labeled “Whalers for Japan.”

The cookies are being distributed to every school in the district to be sold for $1 a bag. All the proceeds will go to the American Red Cross for Japan Relief to help earthquake victims. “I think it’s pretty cool I can help in some way,” said Doug Agnton, a junior, as he tied up one of the 733 bags they were filling with three cookies apiece.                                                                         

Retired teacher Donna Vendetto cooked up the idea for the fundraiser but Crouch and the 80 students involved were quick to get on board. Crouch and Vendetto had organized a similar mass bake sale to benefit victims of the 2004 tsunami that devastated Indonesia. “Anything she asks me to do, I do,” says Crouch. “My kids are always willing to do things and sometimes they don’t know how to help, so we show them.”

High school seniors Leslie Souvenance and Kaila Brown who helped coordinate the fundraiser, recruiting student volunteers and letting them know they could get community service hours for it, needed little prompting. “I was like, of course, I’ll do anything to help,” said Brown.

Like many students who volunteered, both Souvenance and Brown had fulfilled the school’s community service hour requirements long ago. “I always do community service,” says Souvenance. “Last year I did something for the Haitian foundation. It’s a helping hand.”

New London High School students aren’t the only young people who are thinking globally and acting locally to help earthquake victims in Japan. On Friday, New London Rotaract will hold a fundraiser at pub in New London to benefit Rotary International’s Japan Disaster Relief Fund.

New London Rotaract is a young organization in every sense. Founded just under a year ago by University of Connecticut Law School student Victoria Sorensen Mueller, 28, this Rotary Club offshoot is for people aged 18 to 30. “We target people who are out in the work force who are looking for an avenue to donate their time and to be a vehicle to give back to their community,” says Mueller. “We try to address the needs of New London as best we can.”

Since its first meeting last April, New London Rotaract members have worked on local beautification projects, volunteered to help Covenant Shelter and Toys for Tots, and they are currently raising money to equip a village in India with water filtration systems. The March 25 benefit for Japan kicks off at 9 p.m. at Hanafin’s with the band Sunday Gravy, cocktails, and Japanese beer donated for the occasion. A portion of the proceeds from the $7 cover and cocktails, and all of the proceeds from Japanese beer sales and raffles, will be donated to the Japan Disaster Relief Fund.  

“I’m hoping to get $1,000,” says Mueller. “My fellow Rotarians think I’m crazy but I think we can do it.”