milk money

Kindergartner Crowdfunds $5,000 to Pay for Classmates’ Milk, Because There Is Still Some Good Left in This World

A young hero. Photo: Sunshine’s Class Milk Money Mission/Jackie Sue Oelfke/Go Fund Me

A couple of weeks ago, Jackie Oelfke caught her granddaughter Sunshine stuffing money into her school bag. Understandably, Oelfke asked what was up. “I’m taking it for my friend Layla,” Sunshine explained. “Her mom doesn’t have milk money, and I do.” Clearly no grandma could rain on that parade, so she dutifully helped her granddaughter take the $30 she’d saved to her rural Michigan class, effectively launching the very headstrong Sunshine’s “Class Milk Money Mission.”

CBS News reports Sunshine has 20 classmates, and about half can’t afford milk. Milk costs 45 cents per carton, so Sunshine would need $800 to buy her classmates milk every day for one school year — definitely more than this little Michigander had in her Arctic Cat piggy bank. So, like any entrepreneurial 5-year-old would, she harnessed the power of crowdfunding after Oelfke’s teary-eyed video went viral on Facebook:

A GoFundMe was set up after “dozens of people” offered to donate in response to Oelfke’s post. Nothing can seemingly stop Sunshine now that she’s been on all the local media, and she apparently brings in a new zipper-storage bag of money pretty much every day.

Her GoFundMe campaign has been going for ten days so far, and today it surpassed its $5,000 goal — enough to give her classmates milk money until they’re well into the fourth grade.

This post has been updated to reflect the campaign’s latest figures.

Kindergartner Raises Thousands to Pay for Classmates’ Milk