Cerritos High School’s Antidote International hosted the Lunch for Lenana from Nov. 14-18. Lunch for Lenana was a world wide fundraising competition hosted by The Supply, a non-profit organization, whose primary goal is to build a secondary school in a slum village in Kenya. Schools from all over the world, including universities and high schools, participated in this fundraising event.
The Supply challenged students all over the world to give up their lunch for one whole week and with the left over money to donate it to the students in Lenana. In Lenana, the Kenyan kids choose not to eat their lunch in order to save up money for the KCPE Primary National Examination. Through this, students were able to see how desperate these kids were for an education and what education meant to them.
Therefore, Antidote International took this opportunity and strongly urged the students of Cerritos High to participate in this campaign and donate to the cause. Also as an incentive, the YouTube star, KevJumba, agreed to meet and greet the students of the winning school.
In order to prepare for this fundraiser, Antidote International planned for days of how to publicize and how to collect donations. In order collect money, the officers made cost-efficient canisters. They bought green plastic cups to match the color of the club and made the lid out of different colored felt. This not only was an inexpensive way to make canisters but it also attracted students with its unique design.
Lunch for Lenana was publicized throughout the whole week through the daily bulletin, posters, and C-High TV. Co-Presidents, MaryAnne Choi and Nita Kim, featured on the Cerritos High TV to advertise the event and also played a documentary of the Lenana students studying in a slum environment. The student body was well informed and helped contribute to the cause.
As a result, the fundraiser was successful. However the final winners will not be announced until the count is finalized. The Supply will announce the winning school after receiving all the donations.
Antidote International also hosts an annual benefit concert, Rock for Relief, and this year has decided to donate all the proceeds to The Supply. As Antidote International is hand in hand with The Supply this year, the members hope that all events will be successful and that the students in Lenana will truly be able to achieve their aspirations without finance being their main issue.
“We thought this would be a nice fundraiser to participate in because we are helping out The Supply for our Rock for Relief as well. It is also a great way to publicize the importance of education because students these days do not feel the same way about education and take it for granted most of the time,” said Public Relations Nancy Kim. “It would also be wonderful to get KevJumba to come to our Rock for Relief, seeing that it would increase our audience size and we would be able to donate more to the organization. Overall the fundraiser went well and now we are just hoping for a good outcome.”
