Service Learning for Pennies a Day

| By: Committee for Children

When most of us see a pile of pennies, we think it doesn’t amount to much. But the kids at Madison Middle School know better.

Some of the students at Madison participate in an extracurricular activity called Penny Harvest. The program is built on the fact that there are millions of dollars of idle pennies in American households, and that by bringing in this smallest denomination of money, students can make a big difference in their communities.

The Penny Harvest group’s aim is to raise $1,000 in pennies. In the spirit of true service learning, they meet once a week after school in “philanthropy roundtables” to identify the problems facing their community, and what charities can best alleviate those problems. Then they divide the collected money up among the identified charities in the spring, and present it to them in a ceremony.

Stacey Riley is a Madison mom, and the Penny Harvest coach. She loves Penny Harvest because it “teaches students the value of philanthropy and how something as small as a penny can make a difference. Students are in charge—they collect the pennies, then identify, research, and select nonprofit charities to give the money they collect to,” says Riley.

Madison’s Penny Harvest group chose bullying as one of the issues they wanted to alleviate. So they chose Committee for Children as the recipient of part of their penny harvest, and asked us to use the money to send Second Step kits to another local school of our choice. So we sent the kits to Jane Addams K-8 School.

In May of 2012, Committee for Children Executive Director Joan Duffell was invited to Madison to accept a “giant check” for $200, which was put toward the purchase of Second Step kids for Jane Addams School. Duffell was floored by the experience: “I’ve been working with schools the world for over thirty years to implement high-quality social-emotional learning. You’d think nothing would surprise me at this point, but in fact, the Madison Middle School students took my breath away. How incredibly touching to see them use their hard-earned Penny Harvest funds to share the benefits of Second Step with children in another school. This is true social-emotional learning in action!”

What’s more, the Penny Harvest students at Madison have given themselves a valuable service-learning experience. By incorporating such essential facets of service learning as meaningful service, youth voice, reflection, and partnerships, these students and their pennies are not only helping others—they’re helping themselves, too.

Interested in getting your students involved in service learning? Start your own Penny Harvest!