“Pass It Forward” – Waltham High School has kids manage the “Student Santa” fundraising budget, and in doing so also teaches lifelong lessons in giving back

I sang in the Reagle Players’ Christmas show as a member of the choir this season, and noticed a group of students during each intermission raising funds and collecting presents for “Student Santa.” They were clearly a motivated group – all over the high school walls were signs reminding their classmates to participate.

Stephen Goodwin, Director of History for the Waltham school district, said he was inspired in 1984 to create the program after watching his wife contact City Hall about helping a family during the holiday season for her Brownie Troop’s community service project. He and fellow history teacher Jack Cox got started with a list that described the gender and ages of 45 children. (For their own privacy and security, the children’s names are not released.)

“We thought that was an enormous number,” Goodwin said in an interview. “But year by year the program grew exponentially. We’re now in the 280 to 300 children-per-year range.”

The children who receive gifts are all residents of Waltham, a requirement of the Student Santa program because, Goodwin says, “we always insisted that we wanted to keep this a project by students for children in their own community.”

Once Goodwin gets the list, it’s the high school students’ turn to take ownership of the execution of the program. It starts in the classroom. Each first period class nominates a class representative who is their liaison with the program, and oversees “adopting” a child. The student reps collect funds from their classmates, creating their holiday budget, and then oversee the shopping for gifts that are age- and gender-appropriate for their child. They report back to their classrooms afterwards on the purchases.

Student organizations at the school, from the chorus and band to the French club and sports teams, similarly each “adopt” a child, raise funds, and manage the holiday budget.

Since there aren’t enough classes and groups to cover all of the children on the list, the students conduct broader-based fundraising efforts to raise enough money to fill a sack with presents. Between these efforts and donations from the high school staff, they generally aim to give each child about $100 worth of gifts.

Students from the National Honor Society and the Student Council met last Saturday morning and were given over $1,000 to take care of 15-20 children, Goodwin said. They’re learning financial responsibility because “they have to take care of the money they’re given and spend as wisely as possible to seek the best bargains,” he said.

The gifts are then wrapped and collected in the high school auditorium, filling the large stage. When the school hosts its holiday assembly before winter break, all of the students get to see their stage filled with the gifts that they worked together to give. This year, the assembly takes place on Thursday morning. Volunteers from the city and other organizations then come with trucks to collect the gifts and take them to various distribution points.

“It’s great because the kids are doing it themselves,” Goodwin said. “We always say there’s two major goals: One is to help so that no child has Christmas morning without Christmas. The other is to create a spirit of lifelong giving in kids.”

Goodwin’s efforts seem to be working. Several of his students went on to start similar programs in their college dorms after graduation. Last week four students at Bentley University, all of whom are Waltham High School alumni, organized a performance of “It’s a Wonderful Life” and donated the proceeds from the show to Student Santa.

“Pass it forward,” Goodwin says.