Merrill Market Sales Help Community Groups Profit
Sales from the first Merrill Market will go towards supporting a variety of community organizations.
Thursday afternoon the cafeteria at Merrill Middle School was a strange brew of vibes from the trading floor at the New York Stock Exchange and the midway at the Iowa State Fair.
They’re calling it the Merrill Market and it’s this year’s variation on the theme first established three years ago in the Dollar Doing Good project.
Every year now each Mustang 6th grader gets a buck from the school’s PTA and “contracts” to parlay it into some greater good in the community. A hit from the start, the project just keeps getting bigger and better.
This year science teacher Blake Hammond and some other Merrill staffers came up with the centralized market idea in response to more and more requests from students to collaborate with one another and create goodwill economies of scale. And from the look, sound and smell of things on Thursday afternoon the roughly 75 student marketeers, about 1/3 of this year’s 6th grade cohort, really like the market day idea!
So will all of the community beneficiaries who stand to reap the proceeds raised by selling cookies, brownies, popcorn, dum-dums, doughnuts (Hammond, among many others, more resembled a soldier or a soda jerk than a science teacher in the Krispy Kreme cap he was sporting), Doritos and bottled water/lemonade to wash it all down.
The Animal Rescue League, Blank Children’s Hospital, Youth Emergency Shelter & Services, Wounded Warrior Project and the Make a Wish Foundation are just a representative sample of the agencies earmarked to receive donations.
It wasn’t all sugary treats. There were carnival games like popping balloons with darts and a beanbag toss. One booth offered custom-made bracelets in exchange for a small donation. Another’s wares were stationery. Scarves could be had. Books were being sold, and raffle tickets, too, toward prizes of handmade Hawkeye and Cyclone blankets. Besides all of the nonprofits, Windsor and Perkins, two of the elementary schools in the Merrill feeder pattern, will share in the proceeds to help with projects to boost book inventories and expand the playground, respectively. Two dogs, Jake and Milton, were lapping up lots of attention as reps for Puppy Jake, an organization that matches veterans with service dogs. There were live student musicians performing for tips that will go to the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation.
Students prepared for the market by discussing in classes the value of contributions besides money. Time, after all, is money, right? Accordingly, some of the kids will just buy a couple of postage stamps with their dollars and slap them on the letters they pledged to write to disabled veterans and senior shut-ins.
From 1:30-2:30 the customers were fellow students. After school until 5:30 the public was invited in to spoil its supper in the name of any number of good causes.
“The Dollar Doing Good project is designed to expose our 6th graders to the notions of volunteerism and giving back,” said Hammond, trying to be heard above the din of do-gooding. “Then as 7th and 8th graders they take on more thoroughly planned and focused projects as part of their IB curriculum element of community service.”
Near where Hammond was speaking in the hallway outside the main office a sign was posted that read: DEBATE TODAY – LIBRARY @ 2:45.
Good luck with that, someone thought as the next wave of market-goers thundered past.
