Charity Miles Champion: Amy Kriz

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Her Twitter bio says it all “School counselor, volleyball fan, & home improvement newbie. Trying my best to positively impact the community around me”.

Amy may be the only school counselor in the world who allows her students to use their phones in class, but it’s for a good cause. What started as a small honor student project has expanded to a community-wide movement to move with purpose. This is the story of how one educator is changing the way technology is used in her school.


 

I oversee our National Honor Society (NHS) and each year our group picks a service project that is a little more large-scale and long-term than blood drives or food drives. But this year, our group is on the small side, so doing a lot of fundraising was going to be tough to do. 

I was watching the Today Show this summer and remembered a clip featuring Charity Miles as a good way to keep motivated and accountable to work out. When it came time to vote on a project, the members liked the idea of starting a community-wide initiative focused on promoting an active life and raising money by doing so.


The NHS just launched the initiative in mid-January to students, parents, and the community. We have four teams (by grade level) in competition with each other and one community team to help the cause (UHSSilver, UHSRed, UHSBlack, UHSWhite, and UHSKnights). 

The students have asked that participants donate their miles to Autism Speaks. Our physical education teachers are on board and allow the students to use the app when they run at the start of every class period. At the end of every school year, we have students run or walk a 5k. The goal is to have 15,000 team miles logged which would mean that up to $3,750 would be given to Autism Speaks.

So far, our teams have logged a total of 1,394!
This is such a great app – and makes it so easy to do good for yourself and others!

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