Students at Sunshine Hills Elementary raised $9,000 for Cops for Cancer, an amount that Delta Police Const. Sarah Swallow said is “pretty incredible and unheard of.”
Swallow, who captained last year’s Cops for Cancer Tour de Valley, stopped by the school with her teammates during the ride last September. In the time following, students at Sunshine Hills – largely the Me to We group, made up of 65 Grade 7 students – were hard at work raising money for the event.
Cops for Cancer is an annual event where law enforcement and emergency services personnel from across B.C. hit the road and cycle up to two weeks to raise money and awareness for the Canadian Cancer Society.
Joan Stephens, the teacher who works most with the Me to We group, said the kids put together a number of different fundraisers to raise the money.
Students took part in a read-a-thon by taking pledges for an afternoon spent reading books. They also held a raffle for a ride-along with the police liaison officer – a very popular fundraiser, Stephens added.
There were also cupcake sales and a challenge to guess the number of candies in a jar. The latter effort alone raised around $1,000.
Some of the money will go to support Camp Good Times, a getaway for kids with cancer. It’s a medically-supervised camp in Maple Ridge that lets patients, former patients and their families enjoy a summer away from the stress of coping with cancer. The rest will be donated to fund paediatric cancer research.
The money raised by the elementary school kids will go towards Cops for Cancer’s total donations for last year, which came in around $460,000.
“It’s really incredible when you see the kids get it like they do,” Swallow said. “They just get so involved in working with it.”