When Carmel High School senior Lucy Allan was thinking about what to do to earn her Girl Scout Gold Award—the equivalent of the Boy Scouts’ Eagle Scout award—she considered several possible ways to benefit others.
With the start of the school year coming up, she decided on a supply drive to help an Indianapolis Public School.
“I know there are IPS schools that don’t have the advantages that we have, so I wanted to do something to benefit them,” she said.
Allan contacted Linda Broadfoot, the executive director of the IPS Foundation, who referred her to Jennifer Pearson, the principal at IPS No. 51, an urban elementary school in the Martindale-Brightwood neighborhood on the eastside of Indianapolis.
Pearson told her the school has 600 students in grades pre-K through sixth grade, and 87 percent of the students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch.
Allan asked her teammates on the Carmel girls’ cross country team to help. They worked together to make posters to raise awareness about the project, and they placed bins around the high school to collect donations.
From now until Aug. 29, they’re hoping to receive crayons, markers, colored pencils, regular pencils, scissors, erasers, glue sticks and other items for IPS No. 51.
When the drive ends on the Aug. 29, Allan and several of her teammates will deliver the supplies.
“I hope we’re able to make an impact as a community to help the students at James Russell Lowell School 51,” she said. “Even if the donations are something as simple as a box of crayons, that’s one less thing that the school needs to provide for its students. Every bit makes a difference.”
