The concept for the Oxbow Prairie Horizons School Grade 6 class of teacher Mel Irwin is a simple one: every child who doesn’t have a glove should be able to access one.
But with her class accepting gloves in recent weeks to donate to those who don’t have one, the lesson is a powerful one: helping out those around you.
“In social studies I was working with the kids and one of the questions was how you can give back to your community and help your community for its future,” Irwin said. “I was at home one day and watching the kids play ball, and I thought wouldn’t it be nice if we could give everybody a glove?
“The kids agreed and said that is giving back to the community and promoting physical activity and relationship building.”
Thus the inspiration for Operation Give A gLove, which started by doing a head count of the kids, noting the kids in the community who already did have baseball gloves and subtract those from the total list of gloves they would need. From their survey, they came up with 69 students that needed a glove.
“If they already had them we wouldn’t want to give them one, and if they didn’t have one we wanted to give them one,” she said.
The idea snowballed into a fairly big idea, as donated gloves and cash donations to buy new ones started coming in quickly.
“Once I mentioned it to my class, they were on it,” Irwin said. “We split into groups organizing who was going to do what with fundraising and accepting donations from the community and they were really excited.”
One group in the class made posters and flyers around the school and downtown, she said. Another was in charge of social media and then an email was sent to all parents at the school.
Sponsors have helped out as well, and Irwin attempted to reach Canadian Tire’s Jumpstart program.
“I sent them a quick letter telling us what we were doing and didn’t know if this was in their scope or not, but they sent it on to Sportchek in Estevan and they donated seven gloves to us,” Irwin said. “From that, they also learned that it doesn’t hurt to ask.”
They were 14 gloves short as of Tuesday afternoon, with the deadline looming today.
“We’re canvassing friends and family and seeing if we can come up with them,” said Irwin.
She’s been pleased about what the kids have learned so far in the process of doing this.
“It was great and actually (Tuesday) we went to deliver some of the ones we had,” Irwin said. “If we completed a class, like all of the kindergartners that needed one, we delivered those and just the smiles on those kids’ faces when they received them was awesome.”
Irwin hopes the kids will take some valuable lessons out of this undertaking, and not just the idea of giving back.
“Also to set big goals and strive to reach them, even though they might sound hard,” she said. “We’re pretty darn close to reaching this big goal.”
