No child should have to sit quietly and watch their friends enjoy something they can only dream about. Equity matters — and your kindness helps create a world where every child feels seen, valued, and included.

My name is Kara Brown, I work in the intermediate cafeteria at Michael A Maroun and I am attending SUNY Oswego to earn my bachelor’s degree in Wellness Management. I am taking a class titled Health Promotion Program Implementation and I could choose to design and implement any program. I choose to try to make an impact on the children’s lives that I see and talk to everyday.

During lunch, there are many children who buy ice cream daily, sometimes twice a day. These children usually come to the line with their friends who also purchase ice cream. They then go back to their seats happy, laughing, and enjoying the treat.

I then noticed that there are children who do not ever get ice cream, they sometimes look longingly toward the ice cream but know that they can’t have it. These children do not get money from home and sometimes that makes them sad, and they question why others have money and they do not. These same children will find pennies or other small change that they will then bring to the school and put on their account. Sometimes, when they are younger, they think that their .06 cents are enough for an ice cream. Sometimes we see children save their money up little by little until they hit .50 cents. That is when they falter in the slow progression of saving and buy the .50 cent item (not ice cream). Sometimes these children save up enough money to get an ice cream and they spend so long deliberating over which one to try.

It breaks my heart, so I decided to design a health promotion project to give these children a chance to have what their friends have. I wanted to let these children have a treat, so they don’t feel sad or resentful towards their classmates. I believe that if these children had an ice cream treat it would brighten their day and it could help them foster a new friendship or even just help them feel included. I would like to send each child an ice cream coupon worth $1, which is the price of some of the ice creams (the other ones are .75 cents). I would also like to send each child a flier to explain the program but also, so they know that the staff supports and cares for them. The program is titled “We All Scream for Ice Cream” and with your help I would like to implement it for the 2021-2022 school year.