Greg McNeil - Cape Breton PostCallista Parsons, a Grade 8 teacher, is shown with students Josh Boudreau, Samantha Jesty and Ben Smith. Students and staff at Sydney Mines Junior High School were recognized for raising the most money for UNICEF among Nova Scotia schools in 2012.
SYDNEY MINES — The fundraising spirit of students and staff at Sydney Mines junior high has earned them top spot among Nova Scotia schools raising money for UNICEF in 2012.
The top spot follows several notable past finishes for the school in the campaign, including a top five showing in 2008 and top three finishes in 2010 and 2011.
“They don’t do percentage or per capita so our little school of less than 300 students probably beat out much larger schools for this,” said Grade 8 teacher Callista Parsons, the supervisor of the campaign that raised more than $2,200 last year.
“Usually we get these plaques by the end of January and before March break this year I said to our principal (Donnie Holland), ‘We haven’t heard back from UNICEF. We must have done really badly this year.’ And then we finally got the plaque from UNICEF just a week ago as top school.”
The rise to the top is a source of pride for the staff and students who have taken part in UNICEF’s two-week campaign since 2006.
“It is good to give back,” student Ben Smith said when asked why he raised money for UNICEF. “I just go out to the neighbourhood and my family. They really do help out a lot.”
Parsons, who is an English and social studies teacher, said fundraising is also an opportunity to educate the student on happenings around the world.
“We are talking about immigration and related stuff, so all this comes into the curriculum now,” she said.
The UNICEF campaign begins in October in the midst of another important fundraising project for the school, when they are collecting items for the local food bank.
“Usually when we are doing our food drive for Thanksgiving we call the food bank people down to our school and have an array of things we bring in for the food bank,” she said.
“We bag everything up again and take it all out to the trucks and then we do our kick off for UNICEF at that same assembly. They are geared up anyway and feeling good about giving.”
Other local, national and international programs also get the school’s support.
“UNICEF of course is our biggest international fundraiser but we are always fundraising for something,” she said.
“We do adopt-a-family at Christmas, we have our Sydney Mines Cares committee and we just look for where there is a need in the community. We are just a very generous school, I think, with a very generous spirit.”
Currently, the fundraising campaign for the IWK children’s hospital is kicking into high gear.
“We used to do that only in the month of May which is when the IWK puts their really big push on but we’ve decided that because we fundraise for so many different things that we do a few more little things during the year now for IWK so when May comes around we already have a good start on it.”
Even money collected for each casual Friday is given to charity.
“In December we get together as a staff and see what we want to do with the money and do the same again in June. Everything that comes into the school in any kind of fundraising capacity is always very deliberately shared out with different organizations every year.”
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