Stephen's Backpacks

Stephen's Backpacks Society is an organization that tries to help out children who are homeless or living in poverty. They are a local charity, so all donations and work stay in the immediate area. They accept money and material donations with the idea of giving children backpacks, shoes, warm clothing, treats, toys, and other items that would be useful in life. If you need more information or inspiration, try http://www.stephensbackpacks.com/

Thought for the Day

You may want to simply improve the climate of Woodman by posting an inspirational quote or thought for the day in a highly visible space in the school. You would have to establish the space and then maintain it every school day for maximum effectiveness.

Centre for Affordable Water and Sanitation Technology

Their website is www.cawst.org

- CAWST is a Canadian-based non-profit organization (may also be Calgary-based)
- works with global organizations around the world (WHO, UNICEF, Water For Life, World Youth Movement, and many others)
- wants to help deal with unsanitary water and sanitation around the world
- through... providing filters, providing services and providing labour to help families, communities and towns who don't have clean water
- there are many ways that people can help with CAWST, but the most convenient way that I can see with our Leadership class is donations.
- for every donation of $15, CAWST will set up a filter device in a location where unsanitary water can be stored and filtered. These filters last 15-25 years (the filtering process is natural using sand and other natural substances).

Spread the Net

A Message from UNICEF:

Join schools across Canada in the Spread the Net Student Challenge and help save lives
We’re thrilled to update your school on an exciting nationwide opportunity for Canadian students to get involved in the fight against malaria, which claims the life of an African child every 30 seconds. It’s called the Spread the Net Student Challenge and its happening now until March 1st 2009.

Making a difference is easy. Spread the Net and UNICEF Canada have partnered to provide simple life-saving bed nets to African families who need them most. Every $10 raised – about the cost of a few music downloads or a trip to the movies - provides an insecticide-treated bed net for a family in Liberia or Rwanda that can help reduce malaria transmission by up to 50 per cent.

Win a visit from Rick Mercer! Spread the Net co-founder and comedian Rick Mercer is challenging schools across country to fundraise and help save lives through the Spread the Net Student Challenge. Top schools will be eligible to win a visit from Rick Mercer!

Foster global citizens. This is a wonderful opportunity for students to join a nationwide initiative, become global citizens and help make a tangible difference in the lives of African children. It’s also an excellent way for students to build leadership skills and earn community service hours.

Help spread the word. Please consider introducing this campaign to your school. Pass this email on to the student council or a staff member you think would be interested to spearhead the initiative. Students or staff can visit the Spread the Net Student Challenge at www.spreadthenet.org to register and access information and tools.

Please contact Adriana Simon, the Alberta regional manager, if you have any questions or for more information. She can be contacted by telephone on
1-800-819-0889 or by fax on (403) 283-0115. She can also be contacted at the following email address: asimon@unicef.ca

Thanks for helping us Spread the Net! We hope your school will rise to the challenge and join schools across the country in saving lives.

Sincerely,

UNICEF Canada & Spread the Net

www.spreadthenet.org
www.unicef.ca

Charity Raffle

This event can raise a lot of money for a charity of your choice. The trick is to get someone or a company to donate items that people might want. Some good examples might be tickets to a Calgary Flames game, passes to a show, sporting equipment, etc. Then you will promote a raffle where the items that you have collected are the prizes. Keep the cost of the tickets cheap, and you are likely to sell a lot of them.

Axtreme Loud Lunch

Likely this is best done as a spring activity. Loud Lunch is designed to showcase youth musical talent in a Junior High School setting. The event would take place over a lunch hour and showcase up to four "garage" style bands from the student population. Best of all, its FREE. Additionally, The City of Calgary and AADAC will provide programming and resource information about healthy lifestyles and wellness to the youth. Go to www.calgary.ca/cns for more information. On the left hand side, click on children and youth, then school programs. From there you should be able to find some contact names and phone numbers.

Guest Speakers and Performers

Over the years at Woodman, we have had a wide variety of inspirational speakers come to the school to share their life experiences with us. Planning a school-wide presentation would be a great way to break up the routine of the school, and add words of wisdom from the outside world. Most recent presenters at Woodman have included Flyin' Bob (balancing and juggling performer), the Half Pints (little people basketball team), and Alvin Law (born with no arms). There are many, many possibilities for this type of project. See me for more suggestions.

Tobacco reduction programs

The Alberta Lung Association sponsors a program called BLAST, which aims at developing student leaders in schools. After attending a weekend conference in the fall, student leaders then plan activities for the school year aimed at eliminating tobacco use by youth. This leadership project requires 4 students, an adult coach, and several months of commitment, but it has the potential to be a life-changing project. For more information and inspiration, go to www.blastonline.com

Cell phone collection program

This is both a great opportunity to protect the environment and raise funds for a charity of your choice. It is estimated that there are more that 60 million old cell phones in Canada, many of which hold toxic chemicals that would be harmful to the environment. Pitch-In Canada sponsors a cell phone recycling program that will pay groups $1 for every phone that is collected, whether it is working or not. For more information and inspiration, go to http://www.pitch-in.ca/Pitch-In.php

Shave Your Lid for a Kid

This activity has students and staff collecting sponsorship money by agreeing to shave their heads at a school event. In the past Woodman has held this event and raised a large amount of money to help Alberta kids who suffer from cancer. For more information and inspiration go to http://www.kidscancercare.ab.ca/ .

Bake Sale

A bake sale is a wonderful way to raise money for a cause or a charity that you support. There are many possibilities for school events to hold a bake sale at, including open house nights, Christmas or spring concerts, parent teacher interviews, school plays, and more. You could even sell baked goods in the hallway at lunch.

Santa Letters

This is a great activity designed to raise spirit and promote a positive image of junior high students in the community. Organizers must coordinate with one or more elementary schools, and ask if their teachers will have their grade 1 students write letters to Santa Claus. Students then write letters back as Santa, and then come to the school in late December to read them to the elementary kids.

Staff Appreciation Day

This is a great opportunity to be seen in a positive light around the school, as well as to thank the many hard working and caring staff members at Woodman Junior High. Coffee, juices, muffins, cookies and other treats delivered one morning would go a long way to show many people that you appreciate all that they do to make Woodman a great school to teach and learn at.

Reading Buddies

We have many students at Woodman who have special needs and extra challenges when it comes to reading, writing, math and other skills. A worthwhile and rewarding activity could be to arrange times when leadership students would visit our special needs classrooms, connect with students and work with them on those skills.

Labels for Education

Campbell's soup company will give merchandise to schools who are able to collect labels from their products. The company website has a lot of information on how the program works and how to get the most out of it for the school. http://campbellsoup.ca/en/home.asp

Lunch time activities / Intramural Sports Tournament

There are all sorts of intramural events that you could organize for the school, ranging from a one day event to one that might last several weeks. Arranging gym time with the phys. ed. department would be key, as well as getting teachers to agree to supervising the event(s). You may want to charge fees for teams and have a prize for winners, and also consider the costs for using and/or replacing equipment.

Suggestions for events: 3 on 3 basketball, floor hockey, slam dunk competition, battle of the bands, pie eating competition, dodgeball, egg throwing/catching, balloon stomp, others?

Door decorating contest

This event is probably best suited to be a Christmas project, but other themes could be created as well. Likely a homeroom versus homeroom competition would work well. If you were to create prizes for the top homerooms, then this event would be one that cost money. Therefore you would need to set a budget and get approval from me before the event planning progressed too far.

Candy Grams

Students interested in this project would sell candy grams at lunch for a week or two. The candy grams would have a message that the sender would write to someone they cared about, along with some sort of sweet treat. Near Christmas it could be candy canes, near Easter it could be chocolate bunnies. The possibilites are of course much greater than those two examples. This project could be designed as a fund raiser for a specific charity. This project takes a great deal of organization, as all of the candy grams must be sorted and delivered to each of the 27 homerooms at Woodman.

Operation Christmas Child

Samaritan's Purse is a Christian organization that collects shoe boxes full of gifts and sends them to children in war-torn countries all around the world. Leadership students could organize a collection operation in the school and the community, and deliver them to Samaritan's Purse. Go to www.samaritanspurse.ca to get some more direction and ideas.

Match Maker

Match Maker is a company that collects information about the students in the school and then creates all sorts of matches and information that students find interesting. This project is a fundraising event meant to generate interest and spirit within the school. To find out more, link to www.matchmake.com . I also have some promotional documents that might help get you started.

Warm Feet for the Street

The Mustard Seed Ministry works very hard to help homeless people in Calgary. For many years at Woodman, we have participated in a campaign called "Warm Feet for the Street". It calls for people to donated warm socks stuffed with a variety of items that would be useful to a homeless person. Usually the campaign starts in late November and the socks are brought to the Mustard Seed just before Christmas. For more information and inspiration, go to: http://www.theseed.ca/

Pennies for Peace

This project is a fundraiser for the Central Asian Institute. The organization builds school for poor villages in Pakistan and central Asia. See the website: http://www.penniesforpeace.org/home.html

Candy Tree

This project is a fund raising project that involves a group purchasing lollipops from a company called the Candy Tree and then selling them in the school. You will need a charity in mind to contribute to, as this project can raise several hundred dollars for a worthy cause.

Spirit Days

This project involves creating a week of spirit days at the school. It is recommended that you make the event a homeroom versus homeroom competition to increase participation, but this does present challenges for organizers. You will need to develop a plan that would fairly count the participation of the students in the school, as well as a budget for the prizes, along with a plan to distribute the prizes fairly.

Possible Theme Days:
Wacky hair day, hat day, PJ day, concert shirt day, hero day, hippy day, twin day, backward day, retro day, tacky day, beach day, jersey day, others?