MADISON – Four juniors at Daniel Hand High School are lending a helping hand to fellow students through a school project.
The Madison students have raised more than $2,000 for a scholarship to go to a student with a diagnosed learning disability, surpassing their goal just days into fundraising.
The students Lily Arida, Sophie Cohen, Elizabeth McCann, and Hannah Bridge, created a gofundme page to help raise money.
They said they only expected to raise about $300 dollars and hit more than $1,000, in three days.
“It’s crazy the amount of people that want to be able to help us and wanna give us or donate this money towards this cause,” Cohen said. “We never could have imagined that all of these people would be there and would be supporting us.”
The scholarship stemmed from a history project assigned a few months ago.
Arida said the girls were to give a presentation on a group that has been discriminated against or oppressed. They were given a list from the teacher and chose to look at the history of people with learning differences.
“To read all of the things about like kids not getting accepted into colleges and not being able to apply for a college, it really hit me, it hit home for me,” Arida said.
They decided to take it a step further and raise money to start a scholarship for someone within the community that has a diagnosed learning disability such as ADHD, Autism, or OCD.
The scholarship will go to at least one Daniel Hand senior graduating in 2017.
The girls have already raised more than $2,100 dollars which they say is enough money to provide more than one scholarship this year, or a second scholarship, next year.
“It just feels so nice to be able to help someone get somewhere where they might not have been able to go before,” Arida said.
These girls said they learned more from the assignment than they anticipated which includes how powerful a community coming together can be.
The goal is to continue this scholarship fund for years to come.