By Robert Tomlinson
News Director
THREE RIVERS — A fundraising campaign created by two marketing students at Three Rivers High School recently put new shoes in the hands of students in need in the local area.
Dubbed “Kicks for Kids,” the fundraiser was created by TRHS seniors Maggie Gose and Sarela Cruz, students in Scott Muffley’s marketing class. In total, the pair, with assistance from the rest of their class, raised around $2,500 to purchase nearly 60 pairs of shoes for students in the Three Rivers Community Schools district who needed them.
“Being in a really small town and seeing a lot of kids struggle, it was, like, the holiday season is coming up, and these families, we know they don’t really have that much and it might be the only Christmas gift they might get,” Gose said. “That was our big focus, we have to do something, we have to give back in a way.”
Money for the shoes was raised a couple of ways: via a “Bowl-a-thon” event put on by students and sponsorships from a number of local businesses in Three Rivers. After the money was raised, the pair went to the Shoe Dept. store off of Broadway Street to purchase the shoes, where they received a 10 percent discount when the store heard about the initiative.
The shoes purchased, which were wrapped up by the pair over a span of three days, were distributed to the kids at the elementary schools and the high school just prior to winter break last week, with both Gose and Cruz helping with distribution at Hoppin Elementary, where Gose’s mother is a teacher. Forms were sent to teachers at all four elementary schools in the district and the high school, who filled it in with their students who were in need, their shoe size and favorite color, which informed Gose and Cruz which shoes to get for which student.
That information seemed to help out immensely, judging by the reactions the pair got from the students who came to pick up their brand-new shoes.
“They open it, and they’re like, ‘It’s a box.’ And then we were like, ‘Okay, open the box,’ and a lot of the kids were like, ‘Oh my gosh, I really like them!’” Gose said. “There was one girl who got light-up shoes and were like, ‘I love them, I love them,’ and I was like, ‘But wait, you have to see this, are you ready,’ and I slapped the shoes so they could light up, and she was like, ‘I love them!’”
“It just makes all the work that’s been put into this through various people, it just made it worth it,” Cruz added. “You can’t spread that feeling anywhere, it’s just like, you did it.”
Kicks for Kids was planned out initially as Gose’s project for DECA, a career and technical student organization the high school’s marketing class has been a part of, and a competition that will be held later on in the school year put on by the organization. As a third-year marketing student, Gose was tasked with putting together the project, and came up with the fundraising mechanisms via initiatives that were tried in the past.
“Two years ago, there was a Bowl-a-thon and we were supposed to start Kicks for Kids, but it wasn’t as prepared as we liked it to be, and so being able to be a Marketing 1 student and recognize that, and have that be my focus in the next two years, it really worked out because I got to see what not to do, and then how we could change it and make it successful,” Gose said.
Gose, who also volunteers in her mom’s classroom at Hoppin from time to time, said the big motivator for starting the initiative was seeing the students in the classroom and wanting to do something to give back to them.
Cruz, on the other hand, was not initially involved with the project, being just a second-year marketing student, but after seeing the potential impact of the initiative, decided to join Gose.
“I saw what Maggie was doing, and I started getting to wrapping presents, making the little labels like from Santa to the kids, and from there, when we went shopping for the kids is when we jumped in together as a team,” Cruz said. “It wasn’t really my project, I’m in Marketing 2, but I wanted to help them because I saw what they were doing and the impact it’s making, and I wanted to be a part of it.”
The two worked hard to put the project together and shop for the shoes during their lunch break at school, while Gose mainly secured the business sponsorships and kept them apprised of the pair’s progress.
“I still get into contact with some of them today, they’re asking how it’s going and so I’m keeping them updated, and that’s really nice,” Gose said.
They said there is still fundraised money left over that will be used to continue Kicks for Kids for the foreseeable future.
“We want to leave some money for next year so they have a foundation to get started off of, too,” Cruz said.
The pair’s endeavor has also caught the attention of local social media, where they have received a lot of compliments for their work. Cruz said having the publicity is good for the community to know what’s going on.
“If you go on Facebook, and you go through the comments, they’re like, ‘Oh, my student got shoes and I didn’t know who was behind the scenes,’ and it was a little moment for us, like, oh my goodness, it’s actually making an impact for these kids,” Cruz said.
“Being able to see this project, we did the right thing. Being able to see that has been very rewarding for all the hours we put in wrapping the presents,” Gose said.
Muffley, the marketing teacher, said he was proud of Gose, Cruz, and the rest of his marketing students, for doing their part to make the fundraiser successful.
“I am always proud of my students. I’m hard on them, but they don’t realize deep down inside, this is why I do what I do, because I love my kids,” Muffley said. “It’s one of those things that they can take this and learn from this, and then they can carry it on to somebody else down the road. This is something they can take with them for the rest of their life.”
Overall, Gose and Cruz said they learned quite a bit from the Kicks for Kids campaign, and whether or not the project gets recognition or top marks from the DECA competition, being able to give back was the key thing they took away from it.
“We’re doing something, we’re making the difference that needs to be made,” Gose said.
Robert Tomlinson can be reached at 279-7488 or robert@wilcoxnewspapers.com.
