Dollars for Darfur Raises $300,000

Dollars for Darfur Raises $300,000

GILL, MA—Dollars for Darfur, the high school challenge to raise money for refugees of the genocide in Darfur, Sudan, has amassed $300,000, 50 percent more than its original goal. Organizers of the challenge attend Northfield Mount Hermon School, and the NMH community raised more than $15,000 for the cause, more than any of the approximately 2,000 schools across the nation that participated.

The funds will support the Save Darfur Coalition's humanitarian efforts in the war-torn region.

Here are the schools that raised the most:

1. Northfield Mount Hermon School, Gill, $15,412
2. Wyoming High School, Cincinnati, Ohio, $14,300
3. Clearwater (FL) Central Catholic High School, $9,468
4. Lenox High School, $8,173
5. Mill River High School, North Clarendon, VT, $7,161
6. William S. Hart High School, Los Angeles, $6,852.
7. North Rockland (NY) High School, $5,904
8. Tottenville High School, Staten Island, NY, $5,820
9. Bethel Park High School, Pittsburgh, $5,619
10. St. Agnes Academy, Houston, $5,611

With no marketing budget, students participating in Dollars for Darfur, which began in November and ended in April, used social networking websites to recruit high school fundraisers. Students joined Facebook.com and MySpace.com group pages that linked to the Dollars for Darfur website (www.savedarfur.org/dollarsfordarfur), where they enrolled their high school to join the challenge, learned how to organize fundraising events, and tracked funds raised by each school.

Creative fundraising techniques employed by the winning schools ranged from bake sales to student-versus-teacher arm-wrestling competitions. One school held a reminder meal, in which students paid their usual amount of lunch money for a bowl of rice, bread, and water to be reminded of the conditions that Darfuri refugees face daily.

Contact: Kate Snyder, 413-498-3357 or ksnyder@nmhschool.org.

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