ISHPEMING, MI (RNN) – A 5-year-old used the money she had saved in her piggy bank to help her friends who couldn’t afford to buy milk during their school’s snack break, her grandmother says.
On Oct. 4, kindergartner Sunshine Oelfke dumped out her piggy bank, which was full of money the girl was saving for a snowmobile, according to Jackie Oelfke, the girl's grandmother.
Sunshine began counting the money, which she earned from doing chores.
When the girl bagged some of it up and put it in her backpack, Oelfke asked Sunshine what she was doing with it.
“Her response put me in tears: ‘I am going to give it to my friend at school because she don’t get milk for snack. Her mom don’t have any milk money and I do,’” Oelfke wrote on Facebook.
There are 20 kids in Sunshine’s class, and about half don’t get milk, which costs $0.45 a carton, according to CBS News.
The next day, Oelfke dropped Sunshine off at school, where the 5-year-old’s teacher told the girl she had “a very large heart,” Oelfke said in a Facebook video.
As Sunshine, her grandmother and her teacher tried to come up with ways to help all her classmates without milk money, the little girl offered to give up her own milk, Oelfke says.
“I feel really naive because you forget that this is an issue. We’re doing OK, and Sunshine always has milk money. But for her, at the age of 5, to realize that there are other kids out there that don’t get something as simple as milk for snack and then just to want to offer her heart…” Oelfke said.
Sunshine has continued to take money each day, her grandmother says. In the end, she emptied her piggy bank, donating more than $30.
But that didn’t stop the loving 5-year-old.
Sunshine and her grandmother set up a GoFundMe account to raise even more milk money. The initial goal was $700, which would cover the students’ milk costs for the entire second semester, WLUC reports.
In less than two weeks, Sunshine has raised more than $9,000. She also received a Power Award from her school, which recognized her as a positive role model.
Sunshine doesn’t quite understand the impact she’s had, Oelfke says, but it’s enough for the little girl that her friends can have their milk.
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