ORO VALLEY, Ariz. (KGUN) — Tucson's Ward Three Warming Center is getting a big donation on Thursday morning coming from a small group of elementary school students.
This year, the warming center had a few challenges stacked against it. The city of Tucson still hasn't gotten its regularly scheduled blanket delivery from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA, and a nearby non-profit wasn't able to launch its annual Soup Patrol program this year.
After seeing that story on KGUN 9, one Amphitheater School District fourth grader Liam Burke couldn't let it go.
Even at a young age, Burke isn't one to stand on the sidelines. After seeing the sparse shelves in the warming center storage room, he says he knew he had to do something.
“People were starving. They had no warm blankets to snuggle with," he said. "I wanted to make a fundraiser so those people can get the stuff that they need.”
He carried that want to school with him that day at Painted Sky Elementary School, according to teacher Nina Brown, who helps lead the school's gifted program called REACH.
“At the end of class, he asked if he could share something with the class. He put up his presentation, and it was all about the news story he had heard that morning about the Tucson Warming Center, and after he shared that with the class, they all kind of bought into it. They were like, ‘how can we help?’"
The group jumped into action, after asking their principal first, writing a letter to Tucson Warming Center manager Angela Murphy.
"Dear. Ms. Murphy," it read. "My name is Liam, and I am a 4th-grade student at Painted Sky Elementary in the Amphitheater School District.
I saw a news segment about the Tucson Warming Center before Thanksgiving on KGUN 9, and I was inspired to help! I did a presentation in our REACH class (gifted education) about your mission, and my classmates were interested in helping as well."
The small group of seven students organized a school-wide donation drive for blankets, warm clothing and canned and microwavable foods. They plastered posters around their school and debuted the drive on the school's morning announcements.
While their goal was to hit 100 donations, the Painted Sky Elementary drive quickly surpassed that target. Ahead of the students' Thursday morning field trip to the Tucson Warming Center, their donation count was over 400.
“It really reached the whole community," Brown said. "We had some parents then take what the kids had done and shared it out with their neighborhood community or out on social media.”
Burke's mission, which started with seven students in one small classroom, grew into a town-wide trend, quickly surpassing their 100-item goal and piling 400 items in the Painted Sky Elementary School's administrative office.
“If you dream it, you can make it happen," Burke said. "I thought I was going to get like 30 items and now we have 400, and it just warms my heart just seeing that.”
The students are taking a field trip to the Tucson Warming Center on Thursday morning to drop off the donations in person. Brown says that even though the official donation drive is over, if the community still has items to drop off, she'll keep accepting donations.
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Alex Dowd is a multimedia journalist at KGUN 9, where her work combines her two favorite hobbies: talking to new people and learning about the community around her. Her goal is to eventually meet every single person in Tucson. Share your story ideas with Alex via email, alex.dowd@kgun9.com, or connecting on Instagram or X.
