Special to the Herald

The fifth-grade students in Michaela Colapietro’s class at Woodridge Elementary School recently witnessed their hard work come to fruition – a demonstration of what one great idea, a lot of planning and teamwork, and the support of both staff and students can do.

A core group of 10 students – Jaylynn Perry, Mia Baffoni, Emalee Dorrance, Kyleigh Barron, Delaney Evans, Saoirse Bacon, Aniyah Pagano, Hailey Pilderian, Jonathan Vito and Adelaide Papitto – recently decided that they wanted to raise money for the Cranston Animal Shelter while leaving a positive legacy of doing good deeds behind as a graduating fifth-grade class.

The students came up with a plan to raise funds for the shelter and create and donate handmade toys for the animals is serves.

“They were so excited to present their plan to me, they came running up to me in the lunchroom,” said Principal Marisa Jackson, who was immediately on board with her students’ self-driven plan. “We talked about what they could and could not do in terms of raising money and they came up with a good plan for how they could achieve their goal. They decided to put a representative at the school store table during the fourth- and fifth-grade lunch period, and ask the students coming to the store to consider donating their spare change.”

The students made a container and created posters, flyers and speeches in order to publicize their efforts, marking the first-ever student-led endeavor of this kind.

Initially, the students’ goal was to raise $120, but ultimately they raised $215, which far exceeded their expectations.

On Jan. 15, two representatives from the animal shelter visited their class to receive the check and the toys.

Nicole Ferrara, animal control officer, and Shelby Boudreax, adoption coordinator, were enthusiastic and very grateful as they listened to the students’ group presentation describing their efforts.

Following the student presentation, the two talked a little bit about the shelter, the types of animals that are typically housed there, and how to go about adopting a shelter pet. They also told the students that their funds would specifically be used to help a new shelter pet, Chester, a bulldog mix who came in with a case of kidney stones.

“This money will go towards his care so that he can be adopted into a good home,” said Ferrara, who promised to take some photos of Chester and send them over to the school so that the students could follow his progress.

Colapietro was very proud of her students and emphasized to them that Chester would be getting help thanks to their efforts.

“You guys did that,” she told them proudly as the students handed over the check and hand-sewn toys to Ferrara and Boudreaux.