Sage Faculty and Students Kick off the Great Coin Race

In September, The Sage School launched a community service project called “20 for 20” in honor of the school’s 20th anniversary.

Throughout the course of the year, students, parents, faculty, and staff committed to perform at least 20 acts of kindness, service, and good work that benefit Foxboro and the surrounding communities. To date, students have made lunches for homeless shelters, held food drives, donated warm coats for kids, held a fundraiser for Heifer International, sold T-shirts, donated items to a local animal shelter—just to name a few of these community service projects according to their press release.

Sage is about to launch “The Great Coin Race,” a special community service pilot program by Kids to Kids/World Connect. Kids to Kids was started in 2005 by four middle school-aged girls who wanted to help children in other countries develop their artistic, athletic and educational interests and enjoy childhood.

In 2009, World Connect, a non-profit organization dedicated to improving the health and well being of women and children in underserved and under-resourced communities worldwide, incorporated the Kids to Kids program.

On Friday, April 1, representatives from World Connect and Kids to Kids, including one of the student co-founders, came to Sage to speak about why they started these organizations and the impact Sage can have on the lives of students in other countries.

The Sage School has selected a Kids to Kids project in the Dominican Republic called “Passport to the World.” Sage students and teachers will “race” by collecting spare change to travel the 1,567 miles from Foxboro to the Dominican Republic. Each mile is 50 cents, so each team’s goal is $783.50. “Passport to the World” will help a community in the Dominican Republic enhance their library which is currently little more than a random assortment of old textbooks, magazines, and obscure classic works thrown together on a few shelves in the corner of the community center.

The money raised by Sage will help with some of the short-term goals of this project which include improving the physical space of the library to make it more inviting and comfortable and to improve the selection of books available to read.