Team Endure to Cure member Kimmie Brown from Chicago highlights a recent experience of how the “little things” really are not all that little when you consider the kind of cumulative effect they can have on the world.

On President’s Day my children and I were getting a head start on the annual spring cleaning of our home. In the nearby pile of garbage, I noticed a few sparkling pieces of metal that warranted a closer look.  To my suprise, I found the shiney pieces of metal to be small coins who had the faces of the presidents who we were honoring on the very same day.

While I was doing my best to control my anger that my children would throw away money, being a school teacher, I realized that this was a defining moment for their development and was lesson that needed to be conveyed which would hopefully stay with them for the rest of their lives.  So I pulled them aside and sternly asked, “WHAT ARE YOU DOING THROWING AWAY MONEY?”  Each of them said, “they’re only pennies  and nickles, Mommy; they are not worth much of anything.”

Kayla, the oldest, had 24 cents in her pile while Kelly had 18 cents. That is 44 cents they were throwing away!  While 44 cents may not seem like a lot on its own, if you add 44 cents up over days, weeks and months it quickly adds up to become a rather large amount.  Look at it like this: hypothetically,  44 cents a day turns into just over $3 a week, which turns into over $13 a month, which turns into a whopping $161 a year.  I don’t know about your household, but where I come from  THAT’S A  LOT OF MONEY!

Since that day, together we decided that we would find a more productive alternative to loose change than throwing it away.  Now we have implemented what we named the “Loose Change Policy” in our home. The policy is pretty simple and easy for them to understand: whenever we find loose change or have loose change in our pockets at the end of the day, we will put it in a box and we will later see how it can make a positive difference. The loose change we have at the end of each month will then be donated to Endure to Cure as part of my effort to help change the lives of children battling cancer.

Now, not only have I taught my daughters the valuable lesson of how small contributions combine to make large outcomes, I have also taught them the importance of philanthropy with helping causes greater than ourselves.  In our case, helping the FIGHT AGAINST PEDIATRIC CANCER!

Kimmie Brown