Penny Harvest Colorado

Penny Harvest Coach Trainings

January 20th 1-4:00 pm

January 21st 9:00 am - 12:00 pm

at the Daniels Fund, 101 Monroe St.

To make sure the Penny Harvest is as successful as it can be, and coaches have all the tools they need, trainings are required for all 1st and 2nd year coaches and co-coaches. 

Welcome to the 2011/2012 Penny Harvest!

Last year we introduced two awards for Colorado Penny Harvest Coaches who work hard to bring philanthropy and service to their schools and communities. Some coaches go above and beyond this duty - their actions and innovations lead to fresh ideas, lesson plans, and harvesting and teaching strategies, many of which may later become standard Penny Harvest Practice, adopted into our core curriculum.

This year, our Penny Harvest Advisory Board selected the coaches from one "All Star" Penny Harvest School to receive the Teddy and Nora Gross Award. This award is given in the spirit of the tremendous vision and innovation of Teddy and Nora Gross, founders of the Penny Harvest. To be selected, coaches must:

*Lead their Penny Harvest school through all 4 phases of the program (Collecting Pennies, Making Gratns, Neighborhood Service, and Party and Plan).

*Integrate the core components of the Penny Harvest: whole school involvement, student leadership and reflection, community participation and curriculum integration. *Demonstrate strategy and innovation, fresh ideas, or new ways to pair the program with existing philanthropic activities, or district required curriculum.

We are happy to announce that the winner of Colorado's Teddy and Nora Gross Award goes to... Melissa Houlihan and Amy Feijoo from Meiklejohn Elementary School! Melissa and Amy are amazing coaches! They have both been facilitating the program for 4 years at Meiklejohn Elementary in Jefferson County. Each year, they follow the full process with Kick-Off Ceremonies, Penny Wars, Classroom Competitions, Penny Harvest Leader T-shirts, numerous site visits from nonprofit leaders, etc. This year, their school collected 107 full bags of pennies!! The largest harvest in Colorado by far! They doubled their harvest from last year, and had 100% student participation!!! And because they exceeded their collection goal, the principal lived up to his promise. Check out the full video here or go to you tube, arvada penny harvest www.youtube.com/watch?v=KIjZlVvVTi0

We also introduced a Colorado Rookie Award for a first-year Penny Harvest Coach that not only completed the program in its entirety, but also went above and beyond in creativity and innovation. The 2010-1011 Colorado Rookie Award goes to Kim Beaupre from Cottonwood Creek Elementary! Kim is an amazing teacher! She went above and beyond the call of duty with launching the Penny Harvest at her school this year, and getting all of the students and parents involved! Kim teaches health and gym classes at Cottonwood Creek and believes that being healthy means taking care of your body, your mind and your spirit, and that serving others is the best exercise for a healthy spirit! She even created a spot for a Penny Harvest booth at the District's annual health fair to highlight healthy giving. Kim is very enthusiastic, energetic, and creative! She used children's literature to tie in key themes for the character development of the Penny Harvest (books such as "The Giving Tree" and "Have You Filled Your Bucket Today"). She created a huge Giving Tree right in the middle of the entry way where students and teachers could add the issues and organizations they cared about on the leaves of the tree, which included the tag line: Branching Out to Help Others. They used the trunk of the tree to track the number of sacks collected. Additionally, each classroom was given a bucket to dump their pennies in. The buckets (going in line with the "Have you Filled Your Bucket Today, which all the students read before launching the harvest), had little signs that read: "Spare Change to Make a Change." The whole school participated in harvesting, AND making decisions. Rather than having a smaller group of student leaders, Kim posted large posters in the hallways, and sent home surveys to every student so they could vote on their top issues, submit organizations they'd like to fund, and then vote on the finalists for receiving their grants.

Stay tuned for more information on the 2011-12 Penny Harvest!