Wednesday, May 6, 2009

Well, it's money counting time at Westbury Christian. Every year, the school collects money for kids in Honduras. In the middle of the school year, students receive "Honduras bottles" which they use to store coins until the end of the school year. The school has managed to raise thousands of dollars in the previous years with these bottles and it is time to do it again. Since, my bible teacher, Coach Hawley, author of the famous blog, "When Then Is This Child Going to Be", is the Honduras money collection coordinator, his classes usually help sort out the money. I am lucky to be in his class this year to participate! But not only do we sort money we also count it, which is a very tedious and important task. We have to be very accurate with our counting which means no play time.
Day 1
How do we sort this coins? Well, 4 5 gallon containers are marked with the words, "nickels", "pennies", "quarters" and "dimes". You split up into groups of four and a whole bunch of money is poured on the table. Then, students call which type of coins they want to get out of the mountain of coins. I ended up picking out quarters. Once, you picked out all your chosen coins, you poured them in the 5 gallon container with the correctly marked coinage. This was my fav orite part so far.
Day 2
Today, we began the counting. Which meant there was little time for talking. Today, was serious business. But, it still was pretty fun. The procedure for today was counting 100 pennies and placing them in a bottle. You would then place them on the table in the front of the classroom, this would keep happening until there were 25 bottles worth of 25 dollars on the table. They were then placed in a bank coinage bag. My friends, Tosin and Autumn, helped lock the bag once 25 dollars was put inside. It was pretty fun to watch them figure out how to not get the sticky part of the bag on the wrong part of the bag. But, they managed to figure it out.

Tomorrow, we get a break from our tediousness and we have a quiz. But, Friday we start back our counting. There are a few of us though who haven't even brought their bottles yet. Sadly, I am in that category. But, I plan to bring all the money I collected tomorrow. I think this is a great way to help out those who are less fortunate than we Americans. We take so much for granted and I think Westbury Christian is awesome for thinking outside of the box to help raise money for these kids. This has taught me that a penny can make a difference.

Honduras experience...to be continued...