FLORENCE, Texas — Florence Elementary students raised money for their school through acts of kindness.
The Florence Elementary PTA helped launch the fundraiser "Raise Craze" at their school and the students greatly exceeded their goal.
The students came up with acts of kindness and enlisted family and friends to donate to their efforts.
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“Kindness is just being a good person,” said second grader Kyndall Harvey.
"I felt really good cause some people have hard times doing things. It’s nice to help them,” said first grader Elle May.
They picked up trash, left thank you notes for trash crews, painted inspirational rocks, helped neighbors with their groceries and even left quarters at the laundry mat.
"The list, it goes on, and those are some of those big things that haven't happened outside, but even in school as well. These kids have gone out of their way opening the door for one another. If a kiddo's got a shoe that's untied, they have 'Oh I’ve got the shoe, I can do it, I can tie your shoe,’ so it's just everywhere. It's just been amazing,” said Miranda Crimbring, the vice president of Florence Elementary PTA.
Now the students are spreading kindness far past the fundraiser.
"I felt so great that I was doing it because it's great to do acts of kindness and you don't have to do it when you're just doing a fundraiser, you could do it whenever you want,” said third grader Faith Crow.
"Whenever you're doing acts of kindness, it doesn't have to be the fundraiser. This is just one of like 10 trillion ways to spread kindness and it feels way better to spread kindness than like being greedy,” said fifth grader Cason Woolverton.
"Even their parents have said this has just been so contagious even at home, that they come home and want-to-do kind things around the house and want to help people. It has just changed the attitude around here. The positive attitude is soaring,” said Kylene Harvey, president of Florence Elementary PTA.
They originally had a goal of $3,000, but announced Friday that they raised more than $15,000.
"It's a struggle to raise money. We need the funds here at our school. There are so many things that we would love to do here for our kids, but it's hard. I know last year for instance, we worked for hours and hours and hours to do a fundraiser and we would raise maybe $1,300 or so and that would be our big fundraiser of the year,” said Crimbring.
The students also completed almost 1,000 acts of kindness in the community.
The PTA hopes to do the fundraiser again next year.
If you want to donate to their cause, click here.