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Your Creative Ideas

• I put our Rice Bowl on top of the dryer. We always find change in the pockets of the laundry!
• Our students had an Ice Cream free day – instead of buying ice cream at lunch, they contributed that money to their Rice Bowl. This works great for soft drinks and other treats too!
• After we passed out 50 bowls to our youth group, the rest of the congregation was so interested - we ordered 50 more!
• We gave them out after Church one Sunday.  All of the boys gathered at the door and handed them out as people left.  We ordered 150 bowls and handed them all out.  After we collected, we held a contest to see who could guess the closest amount and they could choose what we do the next month. 
• Our Youth challenged the Children’s Ministry and the Adults to a three way Rice bowls race to see who could raise the most money by the end of the month. The Elementary school kids came from behind to win!
• Each class decorated a door to promote one of the countries supported by Rice Bowls.
• We had a contest to guess how much the total would be. Whoever was the closest got to pick our activity for the next month! He picked a Harlem Globetrotters game!
• Make sure you have extra bowls, so people can take more home.
• Our minister had a sermon on the effect of hunger on orphans around the world. It made people more passionate about giving.
• One Sunday, one of the youth got up and talked about the Rice Bowls idea. To see such a young spirit passionate about other people’s needs, led our congregation to support the cause.
• Youth have used the Rice Bowls for many years and church members have come to look forward to it at the same time every year.
• Everyone who got coffee took a Rice Bowl.
• We had a competition between the classes. Whichever grade brought in the most filled Rice Bowls won! (It’s great to provide an incentive.)
• During Lent, Sunday School classes choose to give up one dollar per day, that normally went to soft drinks and gave it to Rice Bowls instead.
• Who called Rice Bowls an “At Home Mission Trip.” Since it was so easy, new people realized missions can be a simple as giving their change and got excited about doing more for God’s glory.
• Our Youth Minister planned a carnival. Whenever we won a game, we received change. When you won change, you got to put it in your team’s Rice Bowl. At the end, the fullest bowl won!
• We got a huge tub and scale. Each discipleship group brought in their bowls, placed them in the tub and weigh it. The groups with the heaviest collection won!
• We placed a Rice Bowl in every classroom. Student put a few cents in every day.
• We placed an insert in the church bulletin, with facts about the orphan crisis. We got them off the website.
• Each morning, we have a TV show with announcements and stories from across the school. One morning we featured the Rice Bowls project.
• Our school newspaper did an article on AIDS and orphans. At the end of the article, there was information about how we would be doing Rice Bowls. That way, everyone knew about the project and why it was so important.
• I announced the project at a faculty meeting. Other teachers were excited to hear what was going on and asked how they could support the students.
• Our PTA co-sponsored the project. Every parent took a Rice Bowl and put it in their car or took it to work. This was in addition to the bowls students took home. We raised twice as much money because we gave out twice as many bowls. Plus, some of the parents got co-workers to order Rice Bowls for their own groups!
• We had a competition to decorate our Rice Bowls. Some people got very creative and 3D. The winner got to pick what meal had to celebrate our campaign.
• Our principal agreed that if every student brought their Rice Bowl back with change in it she would kiss a pig at the pep rally!
• At our school, we have weekly chapel. One week our speaker talked about putting our faith in action by giving to others. Then, as everyone left chapel, we gave each student and teacher a Rice Bowl and a copy of the prayer calendar from the website. Everyone was very excited to get started!
• We asked a committee at our school and my friend’s dad’s business to sponsor our project. For every dollar we raised with spare change, we each gave a dollar to match it.
• I made sure we mentioned Rice Bowls to our group every day. Some days we had an announcement, some days we had gave a fact from the website, some days we read the names of the children from the orphanages.
• One class made their own homemade t-shirts with duct tape. They used t-shirts they already had in their houses. We called it “Spare T-shirts for Spare Change”
• Our civics class only has 6 people in it. But our assistant principal said we could pass out bowls to the upper and lower schools. We set up gave them out as everyone was coming into school one morning. We gave out almost  200 bowls!
• Youth members performed a skit during a Sunday morning worship service.
• For the month we did the emphasis, we encouraged the congregation to bring their bowls down to the altar & we gave the people a way to see how many were participating.  It worked to keep the people involved!
• We rewrote the words to the John Mayer song – we are not waiting on the world to change – we are making our own change!
• We asked another club at school to partner with us. It was fun to do a project with new people.