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WEEK of January 7, 2007
@BFS! archives

Every Penny Counts: $2,286 Raised for Common Cents

For the past five years at BFS, the month of November has been dedicated to the citywide Penny Harvest conducted by the nonprofit organization Common Cents. The second grade spearheads the drive, and all classes from preschool through fourth grade are active in collecting pennies. Collection spots are set up throughout the school so that everyone can participate.

Carla Precht, Community Service Director at BFS, congratulated the second grade on their achievement this year and reminded the children of how far the school has come since BFS first began collecting pennies for Common Cents:

• In 2003, $381 was raised.
• In 2004, $627 was raised.
• In 2005, $1,258 was raised.
• In 2006, 1,750 was raised.
• And in 2007, $2,286 was raised.

“Did you know that one 4-year-old girl from NYC started this drive with her dad many years ago?” Carla asked the second graders. “Her name is Nora Gross (see “How Common Cents Came to Be,” below)—I knew her dad,Teddy—and she is 20 years old now! I know more work is to be done in the Round Table to determine where you want to earmark the funds you raised. I know you take this responsibility very seriously, and I’m confident that you will do a great job.”

This year an exciting dimension was added to the Penny Harvest when all the pennies collected by NYC children were displayed in a Penny Harvest Field at Rockefeller Center during the month of December (photo, below). It was estimated that 100 million pennies were in the installation, which was created by the renowned architect James Polshek. The names of all the schools who participated in the Penny Harvest were engraved on the installation and many special activities with schoolchildren took place at the site.

How Common Cents Came to Be (from the Common Cents website)

Common Cents grew from the desire of a four-year-old (our Co-Founder, Nora Gross) to feed a homeless man in 1991. That need led her to ask her father (Teddy Gross, our other Co-Founder and our Executive Director) how she could help. His quest to answer that question gave birth to Common Cents and the Penny Harvest. This is Nora's story.

This is my story: My father and I were walking down the street in our neighborhood when we passed a homeless man. For some reason, this man struck me differently from all the other homeless people I’d seen on the streets of my neighborhood. Perhaps it was the way he shivered in the cold winter air, or the friendly smile he gave me as we passed. Whatever it was, I felt particularly compelled to help him–to do more than put the dollar my dad would normally pass to me to put into his cup. As we walked by, I asked my dad, “Can we take him home?”

As my dad was picking me up from a neighbor’s apartment where I’d spent the afternoon, he reached for our key that we always left by the door. This time the key was not just sitting on the counter, but had been left inside a large bowl of change—and earring backs and gum wrappers and ticket stubs!

It was the same type of collection that everyone seems to have somewhere in their house: the penny bowl or jar that collects dust, along with all the other things we no longer need. When my dad, remembering the question I had asked about the homeless man, hypothetically asked our neighbor whether she would be willing to donate those pennies to the homeless, she shoved the bowl in our faces and told us to take it immediately. She was eager to get rid of the nuisance and thrilled by the idea of putting the money to good use in the community.

Those pennies turned out to be not only my father’s answer to my question, but also the answer to the unheard questions of millions of children: How can I, a child with so few resources, make the world a better place? Two of the smallest denominators in today’s world (children and pennies) have proved a perfect match! And that is the beauty of Common Cents: we give the youngest of all people the chance to look into their communities, see problems and ask questions, and then answer them with the creativity, sensitivity, and generosity that come so naturally to children–and all this using the loose change that no one seems to miss at all. That’s why nearly two decades later, I am still so proud to be part of Common Cents.

Nora Gross is now a senior at Princeton University studying art history, photography and African-American studies. She hopes to come back to New York City to teach high school after graduation.