Penny Harvest

Every year at my son's school they have this event that my son and all his classmates become incredibly competitive about called Penny Harvest. It's created by CommonCents and is a community building event. According to their website:

The Common Cents Penny Harvest grew from one child’s desire to feed the homeless, and for the past 15 years, children between the ages of four and 14 have been converting their natural compassion for others into action by collecting pennies and turning those pennies into grants for community organizations - $5.9 million in grants donated by children since 1991!

The Penny Harvest shows young people they have the ability to make the world a better place by introducing them to the power of philanthropy and service during their formative years. As children help others, they develop their generosity and moral character, and they learn through practice the skills and responsibilities of democratic participation.

Principals and parents find that the Penny Harvest encourages a caring culture and sense of belonging; teachers see it as an opportunity to enhance curriculum through a blend of service-learning, character education, and child philanthropy; community leaders value the millions of dollars and hours that children donate back to better our communities; and kids like the program because it’s fun!

One student from each class is selected to be the class representative who meets with the rest of the grade on how to figure out how to get the most pennies. The grades then "compete" to see who can round up the most pennies. As the pennies are collected the sums from each grade are put on a common wall in a big bar graph. In previous grades, the student representatives were chosen from a hat or just picked by the teacher. This year there was an election for the class representative. All the volunteers had to give a speech and then they held an election. Dylan recounted to me how he won: "I was the only boy and the only one to have a real speech. The others just said that they would get more pennies than anyone else, there was even this girl who had the most coins who said she could get even more coins, but I just told them what I would do; come up with new ideas for getting more coins, like an art sale, and that I'm good at making money, I want to do it for the homeless and that I'll tell everyone about what happens in the Penny Harvest Meetings." I was blown away and very proud. Dylan dictated about it to me in his own (private) blog.

The conclusion of the event last year was that they took all the pennies and spread them out in front of Rockefeller Center.



If you happen to have a few pennies, let me know and I'll come pick them up from you for Dylan. Use the call button on the blog or send us an email.