It started with two girls who had a mission to make the perfect slime and use it to raise money for a worthy cause. Grade 5 students Sara Mckee and Elise Lutchman experimented with the slime recipes they found online, changing ingredients when necessary (substituting contact solution for Borax, for example, when there were concerns over the latter’s potential toxicity). The recipes would “usually fail,” Sara explained. But once they found a recipe that worked, the girls “kept on making it.”
Both Sara and Elise said that their favourite type of slime is clear slime. “There’s all different types,” Sara explained. Slime ingredients can include glue, shaving cream, baking soda and laundry detergent. Food colouring and glitter are optional additions to the slime mixture, Sara and Elise explained.
Sara and Elise asked their principal, Mrs. Kelly Hughes-Allen, if they could sell their smile at school. When they got a yes, “(Sara) gave me some of the ingredients and then we would go shopping together to get stuff and I would go over to her house like every day to make slime,” Elise recalled. To advertise the slime fundraiser to their school, Sara and Elise put up flyers and made announcements.
Sara and Elise made 100 containers of slime to sell at Montclair Public School. Over three days, the girls sold slime to their classmates. “We had to sell more slime because we had kids in tears,” Mrs. Allen said. “We had line-ups coming to get the slime.”
Sara and Elise raised $203.05 through their sales; and although the trial and error of slime-making was now over, the girls had another decision to make. Where would their money go to?
After researching local charities online, Sara and Elise decided to donate their money to Habitat for Humanity Halton-Mississauga. “On the website it said that (Habitat) builds homes for people that need shelter. We thought that that was an important cause because people need shelter,” Elise said.
Sara and Elise “did their homework, calculating the price of their materials and what it would cost them to make it so that they could increase the expenses enough so that they could raise funds for Habitat for Humanity,” Mrs. Allen said. They showed “great leadership and initiative with this. Their parents were involved. It was truly a community event, raising this money.”
News of Sara and Elise’s slime fundraiser made its way onto the desk of Julie Watt, Manager of Stakeholder Relationships, Grant Planning & Gift-in-Kind at Habitat for Humanity Halton-Mississauga. “A little card came in the mail and I opened it on my desk and it was from Montclair School written by the two lovely girls,” Julie recalled.
“I immediately took one look at it and thought, ‘These girls took the time to empower themselves to make a change, make a difference, do something tangible. They made a product, sold a product and then donated the money to make a difference for other people.’”
Sara and Elise’s donation will “have a huge impact” since 100 per cent of donations to Habitat go towards building projects, Julie said. “We have families needing homes. There is (an affordable housing) crisis in Halton and Mississauga. So the fact that these girls took some hard-earned money and they’re contributing it… that money is gonna go tangibly towards maybe buying wood, or some of the tiles, or some of the light fixtures. But it will tangibly go to something in a home.”
On behalf of Habitat for Humanity Halton-Mississauga, a huge THANK YOU to Sara, Elise, Mrs. Allen and the students at Montclair Public School.