Posted at: 02/05/2013 6:49 PM
By: Dan Conradt

Print Story  Email to a Friend

Tweet

Students Paint The Town Pink, One Penny at a Time

(ABC 6 NEWS) -- It’s a project that has united a community behind a common goal. And even though Amber is learning cosmetology and Lilah Rae is learning to read, they have more in common than you might imagine.

"Everybody is affected by cancer in one way, shape or form by a friend or family member, something," said Amber Elliott, who is a student in the cosmetology program at Riverland Community College.

“My grandma did, and she died," said five-year-old Lilah Rae Anderson, a student at Woodson Kindergarten Center in Austin.

And that explains all the pink.

"We're learning to help people from cancer," kindergartner Lilah Rae Anderson explained.

“We're doing a little fund raiser, Pennies For Pink,” said Woodson principal Jessica Cabeen. “Students are donating pennies to go to breast cancer research at the Hormel Institute."

“We're going to fight cancer with the pennies because we need to help people from getting really sick," added Anderson.

At Riverland community college, it's a different kind of fund raiser with the same goal.

"We are doing manicures and pedicures and if you get pink polish with it, all the money gets donated to the Hormel institute," cosmetology student Amber Elliott told us. “It's going to the Hormel institute because they're helping with the breast cancer research."

"And they see all the things going on in the community so it's exciting to go home and say I'm helping to support our community as well," kindergarten center principal Jessica Cabeen told us.  "So the more we can make this a place that's educating, and celebrating those survivors of cancer as well, we would love to do that."

And that's something else Amber and Lilah Rae have in common.

"I believe there is a cure out there, and we have to find it yet," Amber Elliott told us.

"Because we can help people for living," said Lilah Rae Anderson.

Organizers hope to raise more than $100,000 within this year’s Paint The Town Pink effort.