Raising Funds and Awareness: It’s a Walk in the Park to Support Local Nonprofits
For nonprofit organizations, determining how to creatively and successfully meet annual fundraising goals can be difficult and time-consuming – and frequently not a lot of fun. With the dual intent of putting the “fun” back in “fundraising” and bringing together other local nonprofit organizations – including, educational, environmental, and youth-focused groups – Mount Madonna School (MMS) is again hosting its annual community walk-a-thon and celebration –a family event intended to make fundraising as easy as a walk in the park!
All nonprofit organizations are invited to participate in the 6th annual Summit for the Planet Walk-a-thon on April 28. Mount Madonna will coordinate the event and do most all the work, while participating groups are invited to organize a team of walkers to walk for their organization, and their walkers, in turn, are urged to gather pledges of support.
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Sitting near containers filled with assorted plastic K’Nex and Lego Mindstorm pieces, two seventh grade girls laugh as they put the finishing touches on their robot creation, and joke about what to name it. Nearby, other students concentrate on working with the program software and syncing it to correctly control their robot.
Standing in front of the class, the sandy-haired boy shuffles his feet, avoiding eye contact with the middle school students seated before him. He looks up, shyly meets his classmates’ gaze, and takes a deep breath. Exhaling, he begins telling a story in Spanish. The words come haltingly at first, then, as his confidence improves, he relaxes and expands his vocabulary, exploring different sentence structures and verb conjugations..jpg)
“Okay, let’s be honest. We’re in middle school, so we’re not adults and we’re not little kids either. By term, we’re somewhere in between. That can be annoying.” 
“Bravo! Bravo!” said the smiling older gentleman, as he stood and clapped for the assembled students as they finished each song. The students – approximately 45 middle schoolers from Mount Madonna School (MMS) – visited the Senior Center in Morgan Hill on December 1, to spread a little cheer and sing some well-known holiday carols.
Mount Madonna School’s girls volleyball program has four pillars: middle school gold and blue, and high school junior varsity and varsity. The Blue and Gold teams recently completed their season – with both teams finishing strong.