Middle school and high school student members:
Please plan to meet early in the school year to recruit members and plan projects. Meeting time will be announced on Friday, September 9th. Stop in to see Ms. Knuth during the first week of school to say hello and suggest a meeting time.
Thank you for donating loose change in remembrance of Germany’s surrender to the Allied Forces. We collected $144.66!
New shirts, old shirts, any shirts! Come to the NM DPO Tie-Dye event to color your shirt on Wednesday, December 15th from 4:30-7:30 in the cafeteria.
In memory of Chuck Breen, for his dedication and tireless efforts for the people of Sudan.
Click here to learn more.
Lunch meeting on Wednesday, September 8th in Mr. Wahl’s room. New members welcome!
Northside Family Fest Parade is Thursday, August 12th @ 7:30. Wear your Donate Pennies T-shirt and join the Donate Pennies Club in the parade! Meet by City Hall before 7:00.
Mr. Bob Wood is a teacher at Oakridge High School. Mr. Wood’s students are fasting on Thursday, February 25th. Oakridge and Ravenna will compete in basketball on the 25th and Mr. Wood has invited North Muskegon students to join in the fast and attend the game. We’ll be there.
For more information, please link to Mr. Wood’s blog here
Good Deeds
by Loretta Robinson | The Muskegon Chronicle
North Muskegon Public Schools students collected $1,871.68 this winter for Haiti through the American Red Cross following the devastating earthquake in that country.
Fundraising events during Jan. 25 to Feb. 5 included a school hat day, organized by elementary students, and a hat day for middle and high school students organized by the Donate Pennies Organization. Participants paid $1 to wear hats in school. Donate Pennies also conducted a “Fasting For Haiti” on in which participants were encouraged to fast with fundraising options, said Sara Knuth, an English teacher at the North Muskegon schools and founder in 2007 of the Donate Pennies Organization.
Those fundraising options included participants giving money that would have been spent on food toward the cause and finding folks to sponsor the hours they fasted.
The fast offered Donate Pennies club members a chance to “better understand the feeling of hunger that refugees and displaced persons endure,” Knuth wrote in an e-mail to The Chronicle.
“I’m so proud of them,” Knuth said. “I made the suggestion on a Monday (Jan. 25) about fasting for Haiti. It was soon after the earthquakes, the kids got very excited about it and ran with it, and we had almost 30 kids fasting (on Jan. 28), many other people donating and a breakfast on that Friday (Jan. 29) morning.”
Proceeds from the fundraisers will go to Haiti through the American Red Cross.
Donate Pennies is a student organization at North Muskegon middle and high schools that works throughout the school year to encourage youth to care about themselves and others and to empower students by showing them how a single person’s action can help to make a difference. For more information about the group, contact Knuth at (231) 719-4129 or e-mail her at knuthsa@nmps.k12.mi.us.
mlive.com link (scroll down to Good Deeds, the 2nd part of the article)
During the weeks of January 25 – February 5, 2010, North Muskegon Public Schools participated in various events to raise money for Haiti. One of the events, a fast, was organized by the Donate Pennies Club of North Muskegon High School. Read about the experience of one student by clicking on the link below.
Fasting for Haiti by Erin Alderink
Erin is a junior and the club’s student consultant for the organization.
The high school’s fast for Haiti was inspired by Jan Lundberg’s Culture Change blog. Read Lundberg’s post about North Muskegon’s fast at the following link:
Excerpts from the CNN report:
Judges at the International Criminal Court ruled Wednesday that Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir may be charged with genocide for his role in a five-year campaign of violence in western Sudan’s Darfur region.
… “Genocide is a much more complicated legal position to meet (than war crimes and crimes against humanity), because you have to show in proving genocide that there was a specific intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a group based on — in this case — ethnicity or race,” Ellis told CNN in July. “Obviously, the prosecutor believes he would be able to prove this intent and so he wants the opportunity to prove that in trial.”The warrant for al-Bashir was the first ever issued by the ICC for a sitting head of state. It currently includes five counts of crimes against humanity, including murder, extermination, forcible transfer, torture and rape. It also includes two charges of war crimes for intentionally directing attacks against civilians and for pillaging.
… Al-Bashir is the front-runner in an election scheduled to take place in April, and a genocide charge is unlikely to harm his prospects.
