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Penny Wars Waged For A Good Cause
PENNIES
The students in Leadership placed posters all over the school and put the Penny Wars boxes together for each second period class. From left, Chris Pena, Alex Mora, Joshua Felix, Sierra Nabors, Briana Allen, and Katie Searway took a moment to pose for a picture. VIRGINIA STILL/THE NEWS

The month of March is Myeloma Awareness Month and the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society (LLS) have a mission to find a cure and to improve the quality of life of patients and their families battling blood cancers. Riverbank High School students have committed to help raise funds for the LLS with the Pennies for Patients campaign. For the past several years students at RHS have raised funds for this cause in what is also known as Penny Wars.

Every second period class at RHS participates by challenging each other to raise the most pennies. The students are also able to bomb each other by dropping in paper dollars or silver coins which were calculated as negative dollars. The wars were held over a three week period.

According to the LLS website, since 1994, millions of dollars have been raised in pennies and other spare change by more than 10 million elementary, middle and high school students throughout the country. Students across the country collect pennies, nickels, dimes and quarters during the Pennies for Patients campaigns benefiting the Society.

All the money collected during the campaign will be donated directly to the LLS.

The leadership class created posters and posted them all over the school to promote the fundraiser. They also assembled the coin boxes and organized them for each second period class.

The second period class that collected the most coins per student received a donut party.

The first place class, with just nine students donating a total of $97, the most money per student, was Mr. Boling’s second period class. Mrs. Poulson’s class of 24 students took second place with a total of $158 collected. Coming in third place was Mr. Wood’s class of 21 students with a total of $105.

RHS collected a total of $530 in pennies and raised a total of $700.27 which included dollar bills and silver coins.

They exceeded the funds that were raised last year and several students in leadership were proud of their school’s efforts during the Penny Wars.

The Society’s mission is to find a cure for leukemia, lymphoma, Hodgkin’s disease and myeloma as well as ensure access to treatments for blood cancer patients.