SALT LAKE CITY -- Hundreds of students collected hundreds of blankets for the Road Home shelter.
Sixth graders at Monte Vista Elementary School in South Jordan teamed up together over the last week of January and organized a blanket drive called, “Warming Hearts.”
Last year, they did the project among just ten classrooms and collected about 100 blankets, but this year they had the entire school participate and collected more than 400 blankets.
The students’ teacher, Alicia Rasmussen, thought it would be a great learning tool to show children how to be leaders and what service for others in need means.
“This school is really great,” Rasmussen said. “The kids know the importance of serving, and they know how important it is to think beyond themselves and it really was just amazing.”
The students each were in charge of individual grades and different aspects of the project.
“I was in charge of advertisements, like making the posters and putting them up around the school,” said 12-year-old Jasmine Ivey.
“I was in charge of making the boxes, and I helped put them out every day; I would go and pick up all the blankets,” said 11-year-old Kaylee Sullivan.
Kaylee said she was in charge of the second graders, and their team brought in the most blankets: 77 blankets total! Since they brought in the most, they earned an extended recess time for one day.
But Kaylee knows, that is not the reason behind her group’s big effort.
“We were bringing in blankets to give to the homeless because sometimes the homeless are always alone and sometimes they feel like nobody cares about them, but when people organize an event like this, they can get a blanket and they feel warm and they feel like somebody cares about them,” explained Sullivan.
Parents and teachers helped carry all 412 blankets out of Rasmussen’s classroom and drove them over to the shelter on Saturday morning.
