By CHARLOTTE O’SULLIVAN, LYNDALE GREENS PRIMARY SCHOOL
ON SATURDAY 16 April I went to the city to a small place called The Soup Place.
Not only do they sell lots of soup but for $3.50 you can ‘pay it forward’ and they use that money to donate a bowl of soup and some bread to the homeless people in Melbourne.
When you donate a meal you also get to leave a Post-It Notes message for the person who receives your meal to make their day a bit brighter and to make them feel cared for.
We met a guy called Chris who runs the Humans in Melbourne Facebook page, and he saw that my mum and I were buying two meals to pay it forward.
He talked to me about how this really helps many unfortunate people.
He was very impressed that someone of my age would want to do this, and that I thought that this was a really good idea.
It really got me thinking about how a bowl of hot soup on a very cold night would be so important to someone who didn’t have a home or a warm bed to sleep in.
I have been reading about this and I think our school can help make a difference.
The Junior School Council and I are running a campaign in the school called Small Change For a Small Change where we are asking students to go home and ask their parents to help find a collection of small change such as five, 10, 20 and even 50 cent pieces to donate to the homeless.
To see how easy it was, I got my family to collect some spare 10 and five cent pieces and we collected $10.50, which is worth three meals.
If I can collect $10.50 that easily, I am sure that you can collect the same, if not more than that.
You can be as generous as you like and, remember, this all goes to a very good cause.
I know that not everyone will be able to donate money but every little bit helps and it would be really nice to know that all of the money goes directly to helping someone.
We are coming into winter and it is very cold at night.
The largest number of bowls was donated by Encounter Lutheran College of Adelaide and they donated 114 bowls.
I think that our primary school could do it better and I believe that we could donate at least 200 bowls with 200 friendly Post-It Notes messages if we tried.
With about 600 children at Lyndale Greens and including the school staff, that would only mean that every person needs to collect $1.20 worth of small change to reach about 220 meals.
So, please, look under the cushions of the couch, under the seats of your car, on your dressers and bedside tables.
You’ll be surprised how much you can scrape together.
We will go around to the classrooms and collect the money that you have collected each day and then see how much money we can raise.
I think that as a school captain it is very important to try and make a difference and this is how I would like to start, by making a small change with small change.
