Burning Bush Inc. has received a donation of $2,250.30 from Mrs. Rita Cochrane’s seventh-grade class at David Lipscomb Middle School in Nashville. The donation resulted from a remarkable two-year project that grew out of the class’s study of per capita income and standards of living around the world.
In the fall of 2008, the students watched a video titled “Pennies a Day” that detailed how Dr. Muhammad Yunus had helped people in Bangladesh raise their standard of living by lending them the equivalent of just 64 cents. One of the seventh graders told the class about the concept of “trading up,” and the class decided to try to see how much money they could raise by purchasing something for 64 cents and trading up for more valuable items.
They purchased rubber bands from the middle school secretary with their 64-cent investment, and each seventh grader, teacher, and administrator at the school contributed a rubber band to the ball. Dubbing the project “Banding Together,” the seventh graders then invited the school community to make offers to trade an item of greater value for the rubber band ball. Dr. Jim Thomas, a vice-president at Lipscomb University, answered the challenge, trading an iPod Nano worth $149 for the rubber band ball, and the class was off and running.
The next week, the class accepted an offer to trade a $300 gift certificate for maid service for the iPod. The gift certificate was then traded for two backstage passes to the Grand Ole Opry and a WSM prize pack. The next trade up was for a two-night stay at the Opryland Hotel and two backstage passes to the Opry worth $600.
Singer Rick Derringer heard about the class project and offered a Persian rug in exchange for the Opryland Hotel package. Derringer, most famous for singing “Hang on Sloopy” and “Rock and Roll Hoochie Koo,” delivered his rug to the class in February 2009. A week later, the class traded the rug for a hand-made and hand-painted collector’s guitar appraised at $2,000. Several of the students took the one-of-a-kind guitar to a guitar show in Franklin around the middle of March, with the hope of making another trade. Although they did not succeed in trading the guitar, they did meet a high-school teacher from Birmingham, Alabama, who wanted to help their cause. He donated a vintage ukulele valued at around $250 to be traded with the guitar, bringing the total value of the two instruments to $2,250.
The class had to wait several months before finally selling the guitar and ukulele to a couple in February 2010. The full amount of $2,250.30 raised by the class was donated to Burning Bush, with Poppy Buchanan and Mary Barr accepting the check at the school the following month.
The money is being used to fund short-term micro loans to parents and grandparents who need help in paying school fees for their children. BBI estimates that about 50 students are being helped by these loans. The loans are made at the beginning of each school term and are repaid by the second month. Njeri Kaburu, the administrator of BBI’s micro lending programs, recently wrote, “So far we have God at work in the lives of th[ese] women through th[ese] loans and I keep asking myself what the greatest achievement in this work is, and I think that there are more children going on to high school and staying in school [be]cause their parents can afford to take loans to pay their fees. And this is a great step for us here, and in future, poverty will be reduced as th[ese] young people find better jobs.”
The Banding Together project was the subject of newspaper and television stories in Nashville and won a national Izzit award. To read the class blog on the project, go to http://dlbandingtogether.blogspot.com