MANCHESTER – Third grade students at Manchester Township Elementary School recently collected, sorted, packed and donated 60 shoeboxes full of toys that were sent to Ukrainian refugees in Poland.
Teacher Melissa Peck said that she saw on social media that Realty One Group, which is a nationwide company, was collecting shoeboxes full of items for children who had to leave their homes in Ukraine. The owner is Polish and has family in Poland so they wanted to help.
“I saw it as a great way to help others in need and to teach a lesson to my students that kindness always wins and to help others when you can and that no action is ever too small,” Peck said.
“The elementary schools in our district follow Medal of Honor values and we focus on one value a month and, ironically, this month’s value is Sacrifice. I feel like my students truly got to experience sacrifice through this activity between possibly sacrificing items but also sacrificing their time and effort to help others,” she added.
Peck said that the turnaround time for the project was quick because the realty group was shipping to Poland within a week. “I told families they could bring in anything from empty shoeboxes, donations of items to make class shoeboxes, or if their family wanted to fill a shoebox on their own that was great too. The amount of things that came in over four days was remarkable and I’m so proud of them!”
Students helped stuff the empty boxes in class and they also made happy and motivating pictures to put in the boxes. Peck shared the project with Mrs. DeRiggi’s third grade class and the number of shoeboxes doubled. Each class produced roughly 30 boxes each which made for a total of 60 boxes.
Peck dropped off the donations at the Freehold office of Realty One on March 8 and made a video, which was posted to their Facebook page. They told her that they would try to post pictures of kids receiving shoeboxes in Poland so the third graders could see the difference they made.
The teacher added that she followed them on Instagram and Facebook so she can hopefully show her students the impact they had.
