The Daily O’Collegian

A Stillwater elementary school class raised more than $1,000 to help provide clean water to a village in Africa.

Jennifer Colburn’s third grade class at Sangre Ridge Elementary School completed its Cans For Kenya project last week, in which the students collected aluminum cans and turned them in to a recycling center for money.

The class raised $1,105.45 from the cans, cash donations and a donation from Allied Waste of Stillwater.

“I am so impressed that we did it in about two weeks and just in awe of what we accomplished,” Colburn said.

The class will send the money to Waterlines, a nonprofit organization based out of New Mexico, which will use it to build a freshwater well for a village of about 7,000 people in Kenya.

The class set a goal of raising $1,000 when they began the project, which would pay for Waterlines to build the well.

With the help of others at the school and around Stillwater, the class collected about 215 pounds of cans, Colburn said.

On Tuesday, Northern Oklahoma Metals, a recycling center in Perry, came to the school to collect the cans. The recycling center paid twice its normal rate for cans turned in on Earth Day, giving the class about $1.64 for each pound.

After hearing about the class’ project through the Daily O’Collegian, David Drummond, the division manager for Allied Waste of Stillwater, called the school and said the company would like to donate money to help the class.

He said the company would match the amount of money the class raised from collecting cans.

On Friday, Drummond came to the school to present the class with a check for $452.60.

Drummond said the company wanted to donate to the school to get the children involved with helping the community.

“They had the initiative to raise the amount of money they did and [we donated the money] kind of to lend them a helping hand going toward a good cause,” he said.

Hyungwon Suh, a third grader in Colburn’s class, said his class was surprised to find out how much money it raised.

“We just predicted that we would just raise about $500, around that much, but when our class heard it was $1,000, we were very surprised, and we met our goal,” he said.

Elizabeth Steinocher, the student teacher for Colburn’s class, said she was shocked that the class raised $1,000 with the project.

“I didn’t think we’d get that much money, and just the generosity of everyone at Sangre Ridge, and people that read the article and Mr. Drummond. It’s just amazing,” Steinocher said.