Lone Oak Elementary School’s 8th annual penny war was a huge success. The Paducah, Kentucky school has students bring in pennies every year and all the money goes to Nate’s Wish, a group that gives backpacks to kids fighting cancer at Vanderbilt Children’s Hospital and Norton’s in Louisville.
The fundraiser’s success was due in part to Ryleigh Stephenson’s donation. The second-grader brought in 40,000 pennies to help the cause and that helped push her class to the lead. She worked hard to get those pennies, her dad’s coworkers gave her some. The Tooth Fairy even helped! “After I lost my teeth, I found a bag of pennies and two dimes. I put the dimes in the kindergarten’s and put the pennies in ours and it kind helped ours go up but we were already in the lead. Then the kindergarten took the lead. And we’re back in the lead".
Ryleigh’s $400 donation is just a drop in the bucket of the $25,000 the penny wars have raised for Nate’s Wish, but every penny counts. Now Ryleigh is already collecting pennies for next year’s penny wars. Keep up the good work.