St. Petronille students give pizza party money to charity

GLEN ELLYN – Students at St. Petronille Catholic School in Glen Ellyn recently collected $3,197.84 for Feed My Starving Children.

But of those thousands of dollars, a few hundred held particular significance.

When the school’s fourth-grade class raised the most money during a spare change drive for the charity, they earned a celebratory pizza party.

But instead, the students chose to give the money for the party to the cause they had collected funds for in the first place.

“I really am very proud of them,” St. Petronille fourth-grade teacher Laurie Gustafson said.

Gustafson said she had mentioned to her class she felt strange about ordering so much food for the party after weeks of fundraising to help hungry children. The students immediately suggested they donate the money to the nonprofit and celebrated with a movie party instead.

“They need food more than we do,” said fourth-grader Michael Huels, who contributed $25 in change to the effort.

In total, the school’s 65 fourth-grade students collected $478.78 over the course of the drive, which took place March 17 to 28. An additional $200 set aside for the pizza party was donated as well.

“We were so impressed,” St. Petronille counselor Cheryl Winkelmann said.

Winkelmann is the adviser for the school’s Leadership Academy, an organization for eighth-graders interested in service projects and community building that facilitated the drive.

“The Leadership Academy kids were just amazing,” she said. “They were very mindful of the reason why we were doing this.”

The donations from St. Petronille will provide more than 14,500 meals, enough to feed 40 children for one year in any of the 70 countries Feed My Starving Children serves, according to the charity’s Development Adviser Marilyn Maurella.

Maurella visited the school April 30 to receive a check for the total amount collected during the drive from the Leadership Academy.

“Kids are wired to help,” she said. “They always rise to the occasion.”