Gratitude a best seller at Pulaski: Students raise big money for cleft repair surgeries … selling rocks

Pulaski Street School students have raised more than $1,700 selling “gratitude rocks,” which will help finance cleft repair surgeries for children around the world.

The fundraiser was the brainchild of Lisa Talmage, the band teacher at Pulaski Street School. Her students were reading “Wonder” by R. J. Palacio, which features a protagonist born with a facial deformity — so Talmage organized the fundraiser to show her students that they could help children like the boy in the story.

“We’re constantly telling kids that they can make a difference,” said parent Amy Bailey, whose sixth-grader, Quinnlan, participated in the fundraiser. “But to actually show them that they can, in such a practical, meaningful way— it was eye-opening for them.”

Over the past month, Talmage’s students have brought rocks into school and volunteered their lunch and recess time to bag them. They were then sold in ziplock bags for $1 each to other students.

“At first, I thought there was no way that kids would be interested in buying rocks,” said Bailey. “But it was this whole systemic thing. We must have had 200 baggies today alone, and we were sold out by the end of the day. Everyone wanted them!”

Her own son, who Bailey described as shy, was thrilled after he lost a tooth a few weeks ago because he could use his “Tooth Fairy” money to purchase rocks at school in the fundraiser.

“He was so excited,” Bailey said.

A cleft lip or palette is a facial malformation that occurs when a baby’s mouth or lip does not develop normally while in vitro. Clefts are one of the most common major birth defects in the world, according to the Mayo Clinic.

Children born with clefts suffer frequent ear and dental infections, and they often have problems with speech development, eating and drinking.

Cleft surgeries cost as little as $250, so cleft lips are usually repaired soon after birth in first-world countries. Many families in developing countries, however, cannot afford the surgery, so clefts often go unrepaired, leaving millions of children to suffer.

All proceeds from the fundraiser will be donated to Smile Train, an international children’s charity that provides training and funding to doctors in developing countries to provide free cleft repair surgeries in their communities.

Photos courtesy of Amy Bailey.