It is a grade level tradition this time of year for third graders at Middle Gate School to select a kindness project. The kind acts should be an outreach of kindness which extends outside of their family.

The students have two weeks to choose an act of kindness that is personal to them. Examples include helping a neighbor with an outdoor project, baking for a friend, or saying thank you to a community member.

Maddie Herrmann chose to collect stuffed animals for Newtown Volunteer Ambulance Corps.

When the ambulance transports a child, they are given a stuffed animal. Sometimes a stuffed animal is also given to a sibling, or to a child who is with a parent at the time of an emergency. The stuffed animals help provide comfort or even a smile at what could be a very scary time.

With the help of her parents, Maddie put a request out to the community for stuffed animals. She thought she might receive 50 or maybe even 100 donations in total.

In just over a week, she had received over 350 stuffed animals.

The reaction from the community was amazing. Immediately, messages started flooding in on social media. People were asking where and when they could drop off donations. Parents were FaceTiming their children at college who had been wanting to donate their stuffed animals but hadn’t found the right place to do it. Donations were being handed off at practices and school events. Other people were putting together bags and sharing with their own friends, who then wanted to contribute as well.

Maddie’s father teaches in another district and has a student whose mom works at the school. This student wanted to donate stuffed animals because they felt when they have needed to call the ambulance in the past they would have loved to have received one.

Maddie felt so proud to collect the stuffed animals that would make children happy when they were hurt or scared.

She called it “an amazing experience” and said it was “great to see the community come together in the way they did.”

The full collection was delivered to NVAC on December 11.