In early May a representative of the Shriners Hospitals for Children – Sacramento came to Harker’s middle school to accept a $1,200 check from the Peace2Peace club. The club’s eighth graders raised the money in their annual garage sale to help the Shriners. Glenn Reddy has been spearheading these efforts over the last three years and this year was assisted by Jeton Gutierrez-Bujari, Jeremy Binkley and Alex Thomas, backed up by Sophia Shatas, Hannah Baz and Christina Andrus.

The Shriners Hospitals for Children is a nonprofit network of 22 hospitals that gives aid to children with orthopedic conditions, burns, spinal cord injuries, cleft lips and palates. The specific hospital that Peace2Peace is supporting is located in Sacramento.

Advised by Steven Hewitt, the group solicited items to sell at their sale, asking for everything from toaster ovens to paintings on velvet in their creative announcement, stating, “one man’s garbage is another man’s treasure” as their philosophy. They requested the donations be placed in special red bins spotted around the Blackford campus. In mid-April, aiming for a dry weekend, they collected all the goods, set up shop and ran the sale from Reddy’s home.

“Over the past few years, we have raised money for places in Uganda, Costa Rica and India,” Reddy said. “We sat down and realized this year that people need help locally and not just in other countries. Since I have been a patient at Shriners myself, I recommended the Shriners hospital as a group to donate to.”

The Los Altos Town Crier ran a nice story on the effort on May 4. It can be found online.