PRIDE TRIBE/Cents of Pride donations needed

Dear Cherokee Students and Families,
The Cherokee PTA and the newly formed "Pride Tribe" are excited to announce the beginning of a new community awareness project to assist the Cents of Pride program.
Your help is needed to provide donations of gently worn clothing, personal hygiene items, snacks, toys, and other "everyday" items that many of us take for granted.
Cents of Pride is a program dedicated to fulfilling the basic needs of students in Springfield elementary schools with extremely high percentages of children who receive free or reduced meal plans. Students earn "Behavior Bucks" each week by demonstrating appropriate behavior, responsibility, and by making good choices.
Working with school principals and sponsor schools, Cents of Pride sets up an in-school Pride Store for students to shop using their "Behavior Bucks." Store are stocked with donated items -- everything from clothes and shoes to toys and gifts. The students can shop for themselves or others and can spend or save their "Bucks" as they wish. Through the earning of "Behavior Bucks" to spend in a Pride Store, students experience a heightened sense of pride, self-confidence, and self-discipline.
The program was piloted last year at Weller Elementary with Disney serving as the sponsor school. The program has become a huge success and three more schools have Pride Stores: Bissett, Bowerman, and Campbell. The sponsor schools help to solicit
donations and provide PTA volunteers to work in each of the stores.
Cherokee will become the first middle school to join the program. CMS will be acting as a "floater" school. We will be collecting donations to be used at all schools with a Pride Store. PTSA is helping to promote the project, enlist volunteers, and solicit assistance from the business community.
We will immediately begin accepting donations and they can be turned in to the main office at Cherokee. You will continue to hear updates and donation requests throughout the year, so please check the website. Thank you in advance for your support of this unique and highly successful program!
Donations needed:
Hygiene items: shampoo/conditioner, toothpaste/toothbrush, deodorant 
Winter items: coats, gloves, scarves, snow boots
Sizes: boys/girls K-teen

Kim Acuff Cents of Pride
kacuff@yahoo.com
Bill Powers - Cherokee Principal
wtpowers@spsmail.org
Carrie Fain - PTSA President