The FCTS Pre-Employment Program’s annual can tab drive yielded 295 lbs. of tabs for Ronald McDonald House in Springfield.
For the past several years, PEP has collected and donated can tabs to Ronald McDonald House, where the organization’s staff redeem the aluminum tabs for cash. The price for aluminum on the market varies, so the staff redeems the can tabs as needed.
The latest can tab drive began last January and the tabs were collected and donated by students, family, friends, and teachers within the Franklin County Technical School community and its sending school districts.
Charles Choleva, Pre-Employment Program instructor, cited some impressive facts when breaking down just what it means to collect 295 lbs of can tabs. He pointed out that there are 1,267 can tabs in a pound, meaning that PEP collected 373,765 can tabs in total. Choleva added that there are 63,360 can tabs in a mile, which means there would be 5.9 miles of tabs if they were laid out end to end.
The Pre-Employment Program is a small, but effective program that works with special needs students with developmental or cognitive delays aged 14-22-years-old on educational and living skills. Academic skills such as reading, pre-algebra, and critical thinking are practiced daily. Life skills, such as cooking, laundry, recycling; and shop trade skills like woodworking, auto detailing, and office technology give students a better chance for future independent living and job placement.
Community service is an important part of the Pre-Employment Program and the 14 students in the program derive great satisfaction for their efforts. For another community service project, the students and their teachers are selling homemade scarves and they will donate the proceeds to the Franklin County Regional Dog Shelter in February.
“The students feel especially happy when they’re able to see the Ronald McDonald House, the place that we’re helping,” Choleva said. “They get to understand that there are people out there who have it worse than they do. Someone out there needs help and they can help them.”
PEP’s first can tab drive yielded 75 lbs. and Choleva considered that a victory. But, he and other teachers in the program and his students “tried to push on it” to top that total. Last year the program collected 324 lbs of tabs.
“We have a person from outside of the school who recognizes the PEP program is a great place to donate to,” Choleva said. “He’ll make a donation of 50-75 pounds of can tabs at a time. He’s a Shriner’s clown and last year the Pre-Employment Program went to the Shriner’s Circus at the Big E as his guests. He has a son who is a student at FCTS and he makes the donation because he believes in PEP and the work that we are doing. He is not doing this for the glory.”
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Posted: to FCTS General News on Fri, Feb 1, 2019
Updated: Mon, Feb 11, 2019
