O’Neill Students Raise Nearly $4,300 for Sudanese Community Center

O’Neill Middle School’s Scarlet Cluster recently raised nearly $4,300 for the Chicagoland Sudanese Community Center through a variety of activities, including bracelet sales, partnerships with local restaurants—and throwing whipped cream pies.

During its annual “Got Awareness?” campaign, the cluster hosted a dine and share day at Home Run Inn on 75th Street, and teachers served as “guest grillers” at bd’s Mongolian Grill in the Bolingbrook Promenade.

Students also sold bracelets on behalf of their assigned country—Chad, Bosnia, Iraq, Darfur, Burma, Congo, Cambodia and Rwanda—during lunch hours during the first week of May.

Many groups also came up with extra fundraising ideas, advertised through colorful posters hanging in the school’s halls. The Rwanda group hosted a “Minute to Win It” competition, and the Cambodia group sold chances to hit volunteer teachers and students with whipped cream pies. Other groups raffled off gift baskets the students put together.

On April 28, as part of the awareness unit, students got the chance to hear from Chicagoland Sudanese Community Center representatives about the “Lost Boys”—survivors of the genocide in Sudan.

Over the past several years, the O’Neill scarlet cluster has donated more than $10,000 to projects and charities that benefit those affected by genocide.