“Donate to the Maui fires!” junior Lucy Kristofferson yells through a megaphone, as groups of students sporting green Palo Alto High School merch, showcasing school spirit, stroll by. Some stop to rummage through their backpacks for spare change. As the afternoon goes on, the plastic jugs on the table, labeled with each grade level, gradually fill with dollar bills and coins. At the end of the day, Kristofferson pours the money out of the jugs, and counts up the total. In just one week, she has raised over $700.
When Kristofferson saw news of the fires blazing through Maui on August 8, she was empowered to take action.
“[I was] back in my Social Justice Pathway (SJP) class and I figured, they [SJP] always want us to do more outreach and I feel like that’s what SJP is for,” Kristofferson said. “So if I’m gonna have that resource of a community that can organize something, might as well do something.”
Taking initiative, Kristofferson organized a fundraiser to support those impacted by the Maui fires during Spirit Week. After proposing the idea to her SJP teachers, she rallied up support of her cohort.
“The amount of fires [in Maui] definitely had a large social justice impact just because it was a big disaster happening to an area that has historically been oppressed by the United States government,” Kristofferson said.
In coordination with Spirit Week, Kristofferson thought it would be a good idea to have each grade level compete against each other to see who would raise the most money.
“Since Paly has such a competitive Spirit Week, doing a fundraiser during Spirit Week would help drive donations,” Kristofferson said. “I learned about the concept of a ‘penny drive’ from a Tik Tok video and in the video it was a competition between grades so I thought it would be something that could work well at Paly.”
Kristofferson planned to donate all the money to the Maui Strong Fund, part of the Hawaii Community Foundation, an organization focusing on disaster relief and long term recovery for people affected by the Maui fires.
According to Kristofferson, not many people were aware of the fundraiser because of the late notice, so they did not have any cash handy. However, once word spread, Kristofferson said more people started donating later in the week.
“I think we should have gotten the word out about it more ahead of time because we did a little Instagram post on Friday, but I don’t think a lot of people knew about it … and we’re trying to collect donations and everyone’s like, ‘What’s going on,’” Kristofferson said.
Overall, Kristofferson said the fundraiser was a positive learning experience, despite her struggles to get donations at first.
“I’ve never done something that involves fundraising or handling money or trying to encourage donation before, and it was a good experience,” Kristofferson said. “I learned a lot about organizational stuff and logistics and managing a group of people.”
SJP junior Juliana Sandoval, who volunteered for the fundraising committee, said that it was a good experience working alongside her fellow classmates to make a positive impact on the community.
“I was able to connect with my peers in SJP, but also other Paly students who wanted to help as well,” Sandoval said. “It felt really good to share the moment with other Paly students, especially since we knew we were helping a cause.”
SJP English teacher Keith Tocci, who helped Kristofferson with some logistics of the fundraiser, said that he was excited to see one of his students want to make a positive impact on a pressing issue.
“It felt really inspiring to see a student taking initiative in a way to address a timely, real world issue that also involved leveraging the SJP community in a way that would let us do something [in the] real world,” Tocci said.
Kristofferson hopes to continue doing fundraisers for different causes in the future.
“Ideally, I wanted it [a fundraiser] to be something that SJP does every year during spirit week,” Kristofferson said. “I don’t know if that’s gonna happen, but I’m definitely going to try to make it happen for a different cause.”