A Phoenix elementary school's fundraising efforts got a sweet rescue after reaching out to Let ABC15 Know.
Danielle Lee runs the PTA for Sahuaro Elementary School and says fundraising has been challenging for them.
"We're a Title 1 school, and fundraising has been very, very difficult in our demographic for our school," Lee explained. "Last year, we had a pajama Dollar Day event that happened once a quarter, and historically, we only raised about $100. However, last year we ended up raising over $500. So, we decided to come up with more dollar day events."
Their next big idea was 'Freezy Friday,' inspired by a slush machine that had been donated to the school. Lee says they were told it had only been used twice. The PTA invested $500 in supplies for the event, but disaster struck when Lee discovered cracks in the machine.
"We strapped everything together, and we used super glue, and we just crafted it all together and made it work," Lee said.
Danielle says she contacted the machine's manufacturer for help, but she hit a wall because the school wasn't the original owner of the slush machine.
"It was a lot of back and forth. It's been over a month now, saying, ‘Yeah, we're happy to help you. We appreciate the work that you do,’ to… ‘It's not our product. We can't help you,’" Lee said.
Frustrated, Danielle reached out to Let ABC15 Know, and our team couldn’t ignore the call for help. After multiple attempts to talk with customer support for the slush machine manufacturer proved unsuccessful, we reached out to Home Depot, which sells similar slushy machines. The wonderful team at the Thunderbird location stepped up and donated a brand-new machine to the school!
"I just am just so appreciative and so grateful, and it just gives me hope. Times have been hard lately. There's been a lot of just really sad news," Lee said.
The donation meant the world to the students, who had been worried about the future of Freezy Friday.
"After the broken machine, a lot of the kids were like, ‘Oh, no, is this not happening anymore?’ So yeah, we're really, really excited," Lee said.
The school successfully hosted their first Freezy Friday event with the new machine without any leaks or mess, but there were plenty of smiles from students!
"We're always trying to pull the community together and bring some excitement and joy to the kids on campus," Lee said.
A huge thank you to the wonderful team at the Home Depot on Thunderbird in Phoenix for stepping up and helping Sahuaro in their time of need.
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