Kids Make a Mighty Roar
Ten-year-old Ava and her classmates at Linfield Christian School in California look forward to Market Day at the end of each quarter. It’s when students set up businesses where other students can go shopping.
The students buy goodies like cookies, hot chocolate, artwork and jewelry from other kids. They don’t use real money, but toy dollars they call lion paws (the lion is their mascot). Kids earn lion paws for good behavior at school. They save them up for Market Day.
Ava, who used to live in Brazil, a country where many people live in poverty, wanted to do more with her business than earn more lion paws. “Living in Brazil ... I saw a lot of people who were homeless, and I thought it would be cool if I could help them,” she says.
“God made the world perfect, and it was sad to see the people who didn’t get a home and couldn’t afford a job or a living.”
Ava, whose family sponsors children, decided she would use Market Day to help even more sponsored children. She set up a booth and asked for donations — either of lion paws or cash. Her mom and dad had agreed to donate $1 for every lion paw that Ava collected.
Between cash donations and her parents’ matching donations for the lion paws, Ava and other caring people at her school raised more than $1,000!
“God made everyone, and the people who are living in poverty are just as important as people who are not,” Ava says.