Third-grader sparks Haiti relief fundraiser at Orem school

Posted in Orem, Precollegiate on Sunday, February 21, 2010
For those of you that don't know Tanner Monney he is the son of Troy and Tracy Monney my brother and Sister-in-law



Eight-year-old Tanner Monney, a third-grader at Northridge Elementary, is looking forward to the start of the spring soccer season. But the youngster was recently the catalyst to a different type of team effort -- the school raised almost $800 to donate to medical relief in earthquake-stricken Haiti.

Tanner said he and his mother, Tracy Monney, were looking at pictures on the computer showing relief workers amid the devastation in the country when the idea of holding a fundraiser occurred to him.

Northridge principal Kimberly Bird said Tanner asked her one day during lunch if she was "available to talk."

"I said, 'For you, Tanner, I am totally free. Come on into my office and have a seat,' " Bird related.

Tanner expressed to his principal his desire to raise money to help the efforts in Haiti, and he suggested students could place jars in every classroom to collect change, as they had done in the past with "Penny Wars." Bird told the young boy she was proud of him, and referred him to Elizabeth Ellsworth, the student council adviser at Northridge.

Ellsworth and the 14 sixth-graders who are on the student council made Tanner an honorary member of the group and went to work.

Tanner and the team put together the 32 jars, labeled "Change for Haiti," and delivered them to the classrooms. It was then his job to go into the office and make announcements about the fundraiser during the weeklong drive -- a task and a challenge he enjoyed.

"I told them that it would make a big difference for Haiti," Tanner said.

The opportunity to help children in another part of the world seemed to resonate immediately with the Northridge students, and a response developed that was much larger than expected, Ellsworth said.

"I was completely blown away by the response of our school community," she said. "Students were really excited to bring in their own money to contribute. ... I had a lots of students tell me that their parents had already contributed, but now they [the kids] were contributing their own money."

Tracy Monney said there was a noticeable decline in the amount spent on treats and trinkets that week at the school store, and noted that one group of kids set up a table on a street corner in their neighborhood to sell their own art work for the cause.

"It makes me feel really good how the whole school was involved putting money into the change jars," Tanner said.

Ellsworth lives right next door to the Monneys, and invited Tanner over to her home on a Sunday for the presentation of the check to Mark Martiel, a native Haitian who had just returned from his second relief mission to the country since the earthquake. Martiel is a representative of the Orem-based International Aid Serving Kids, or IASK.

"It was a great team effort," said Troy Monney, Tanner's dad.