The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Students ‘pay it forward’ to families in need
At Dickerson Middle School, club pursues its mission: ‘Do good.’
Every Wednesday morning at Dickerson Middle School, sixth grade English teacher Sunny Williams gathers a group of tweens and puts them on a simple but important mission: “Do good.”
Williams started the Pay It Forward Club at the school eight years ago, hoping to inspire her students to make community service an integral part of their lives.
As a Dickerson graduate herself, Wi liams said she knows how much the east Cobb community had to give back: “Our kids have a lot. I grew up here, so I know the kind of community we live in,” she said. “I wanted them to see the value in giving back.”
The club practices service in a host of ways: creating custom signs for teachers’ birthdays, having previously donated to Relay for Life and working closely wi h Atlanta’s Ronald McDonald House Charities.
The Ronald McDonald House serves families of children with chronic illnesses, giving them a place to stay and support in an incredibly difficult time.
Williams and the roughly two dozen students who show up every week to participate in the Pay It Forward Club help the Atlanta Ronald McDonald House Charities in many ways. They organize spirit days, when students can donate to the charity to participate; collect soda caps as part of a recycling program that earns cash; make toiletry bags for families to use in the house or the hospital; run a Christmas drive to collect gifts for the children; sponsor a room in one of the houses; and, every year, raise between $8,000 and $10,000 for the organization.
The Pay It Forward Club’s efforts don’t go unnoticed by those benefiting from their services.
That includes Jennifer Mire, an eighth grade teacher at Dickerson whose son, Luc, was diagnosed with leukemia in May 2021.
Because the Mires live wi hin 50 miles of the hospital, they weren’t eligible to stay in one of the homes. But they often found themselves in the family room sponsored by the organization at Scottish Rite.
Luc was officially considered off-treatment as of September 2023. He graduated from Lassiter High School, and is now a freshman at Kennesaw State University.
“It means so much to see all the care and the giving back that this school does,” Mire said. “It’s a fantastic charity organization, and I’m so glad our school has adopted it.”