Fundraiser

Earlier this week, Alex who is in Grade 3, came home from school and announced loud and clear that his grade was organizing a fundraiser for the Association of the Blind, as a way to give back to the community and that he was going to bring either homemade pizza or crepes. He pondered the pros and cons of bringing crepes vs. pizza and decided to go with crepes. Since the fundraiser was for all students on the K-3 campus, he needed to bring a lot and set his number to 100.


Of course, you can imagine who ended up making the actual one hundred crepes. So, after school yesterday Alex helped make the batter and started a few crepes. Interest quickly disappeared and within 15 minutes he was back outside playing with all the children in the compound…and I was left in the kitchen with the two crepe pans for a good while.

Alex was quite excited about bringing his crepes to school and sell them to the other students. However proud he was, he did not realize that most of the other students would probably be bringing bakery-made products and krispy kreme doughnuts. He packed some sugar and made some cinnamon sugar to accompany the crepes and was ready to sell!

At lunch time I brought a bunch of older students from the main campus to let them purchase goodies. You should have seen the spread: beautiful micro and macro cupcakes, gourmet cookies, popsicles, and of course the crepes. I’m always amazed at the amount of food that is brought to school on such occasions. The children and their nannies deliver the goods in the morning before the start of school so as not to interrupt the classes throughout the day. By the time the fundraiser time comes, the anticipation has built up all morning and the children are both eager to sell their goodies and eat them.

You should have seen Alex, with his stack of crepes, proudly displayed and selling for only 4 SR/1$ delicious homemade crepes sprinkled with sugar or cinnamon sugar. He was successful and sold over half of his stack. Around him were all the other students selling their contributions to the fundraiser. Their customers were holding their Saudi money, pointing at what they wanted and happily trading their cash for their preferred sugary sweet. The fundraiser was very successful and at first count, appeared to have generated over 3500 SR or around $1000, all for a good cause!

It’s fascinating to see the amount of food that gets eaten during such a fundraiser, as if these children were not exposed to sweets…but I guess kids will be kids, no matter where they live! Candies, cookies, cakes and sugary treats will always be their favorites…

Unless the fundraiser is based around the sale of shwarmas or burgers and it’s a whole different story! Maybe another time….