Cheerleaders double financial goal to help foster children
Montville — When the Spotlight cheerleading team at East Celebrity Elite Cheer & Dance set out to raise $650 to help children entering the foster care system this summer, they didn't think it would be a hard goal to meet.
But after about a month of trying to raise the money using social media, the 13-member team realized they had only raised $45 and would need to get serious if they wanted to meet their goal.
“We thought that after people read the story behind what the girls were trying to raise money for, that people would want to donate right away,” said Janice Smith, mother of 12-year-old Natalie Smith, a member of the Spotlight cheer team. “It became clear, though, that we were going to have think outside of the box.”
So the team rallied together to raise the money in small and inventive ways, collecting bottles and cans from anywhere they could, setting up change collection jars in their parents' work places and “canning” for donations outside local supermarkets — learning several big life lessons along the way.
One of those bigger lessons? That with even a little, or a lot, of persistence, a goal can be met. Or, in the case of the Spotlight team, a goal can be far surpassed.
Instead of raising $650, the team ended up raising $1,300 — money that was used to buy duffel bags and on Sunday they filled them with comfort items and essentials such as teddy bears and toothbrushes to give to 52 local children entering foster care.
Sunday afternoon was the pinnacle of their efforts, as the Spotlight team packed the duffel bags in an upstairs room at the Celebrity Elite gym, which were slated to be picked up by local foster care agencies to give to some of the many Connecticut children who enter foster care every day.
“What really stood out to us was how some of these foster children could be taken from their families in the middle of the night, without warning, and are given only a trash bag to quickly to put some things of theirs in,” said Cindy Andersen, aunt of 10-year-old Baylee Pangburn of Taftville. “The goal here is no more trash bags. Every kid deserves more than a garbage bag.”
Working with the California nonprofit Together We Rise, the team raised money to pay for the duffel bags and the many items that would go inside. Each duffel bag cost $25.
For mother Janice Smith, who oversaw much of the team's fundraising efforts alongside Andersen, the significance of what the girls had managed to do was not lost on them.
“They know they were able to pull off a really big thing,” Andersen said. “And they learned a lot along the way.”
“I mean, they really worked hard to see this money though,” said Andersen, explaining the various ways the girls worked to raise the money.
Of those ways, the team scoured Facebook looking for new spots to pick up bottles and cans, as one example.
“We saw a Facebook post on a yard sale group saying that an entire huge trash can, filled with bottles and cans, was free for anyone who wanted it,” Smith said, while also scrolling through various cellphone photos of cheerleaders collecting bags full of recyclables over the last month.
“So we made sure to get out there, and we put on our gloves and sorted through it all,” Smith said.
As for other examples, Smith said the girls would also collect the empty bottles from the Elite gym, cashing in the bottles themselves at grocery stores, while their parents would set up change jars at work.
But it took several team members going to stand in front of local grocery stores, explaining, in their own words, the cause they were working towards, to really make a difference in their fundraising efforts, Smith said.
“What amazed me was how many people were already touched by the foster care system in one way or another and how the girls got to hear those stories,” Smith said. “It was like everyone knew of someone who went through, or was in, the foster care system, or knew of someone who had helped foster children.”
“Hearing all those stories, and seeing for themselves how their hard work would pay off, was really special,” Smith said.
“It really turned into a whole team effort that they couldn't wait to be a part of,” she continued. “The kids were determined not to fail. They just didn't want to stop.”
As the girls quickly worked together in conveyor belt fashion Sunday to fill the bags with the various items, which included coloring books and blankets, Kyra Atkinson, 12, of Groton, couldn't help but note that finally filling the bags was the best part of the team's now months-long process.
“It's really cool seeing everything we've done, all the money we've raised, and how that's finally going towards these bags,” she said. “I've learned not to give up, and that if you work hard you can accomplish so much.”
“It's knowing that we are helping others that's the best part,” she said.
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