NH Auto Dealer Donates Over $60K to New England Schools
Honestly, this is incredible and a little near and dear to my heart, because my family actually benefits from this -- which I'll get to in a second.
Every single year since June 2011, Berlin City Auto Group in Gorham, New Hampshire, pools proceeds of all car sales for their Drive for Education program, which focuses on enriching the lives of children through educational and foundational support.
This last year of fundraising through car sales was obviously especially important to the crew at Berlin City Auto Group, because -- well, let's be real, no explanation is really needed. Students started off 2020 going all remote to finish their school year, and seemingly have been swapping between all-remote and a hybrid of both remote and in-school for this entire school year so far.
And their passion to help the kiddos all over New England showed, because they donated a total of $63,021 spread throughout 29 different schools spread between New Hampshire, Maine, and Vermont. Almost $21,000 went to 12 different New Hampshire schools, over $36,000 went to 13 different schools in Maine, and almost $6,000 went to 4 different schools in Vermont.
And because of all the wonkiness of 2020, Berlin City Auto Group snagged themselves a partner for this year's Drive for Education campaign -- they partnered up with ActivePure to provide 30 Air Filtration Systems that reduce airborne and surface contaminants. 14 of those Air Filtration Systems will be spread between the 12 New Hampshire schools, and the other 16 will be spread between the 13 Maine schools.
Here's why this means so much to me and impacts me personally. First off, I mean, it's just a really amazing thing to do as a human being with the means to raise money and donate it to a good cause. But two of those New Hampshire schools that are the beneficiaries of the grant money and Air Filtration systems donated by Berlin City Auto Group and ActivePure? Berlin Middle School and Berlin High School.
My soon-to-be 15-year-old little brother goes to school in Berlin and I know first-hand it's been a wild ride for his school year this year. He started out doing remote classes, then he switched to in-school, then they had a student test COVID positive so they switched to all-remote, then re-opened for hybrid. And I believe there was one other cycle where they went to all-remote for a couple of weeks and then are now back to hybrid.
Selfishly, I'm ecstatic that my little brother is going to be able to benefit from these Air Filtration systems. The whole point of them being installed into the schools is to take one step closer to making it safer for all students and teachers to get back to as normal as possible and actually learn and teach education inside a school building. So, yes, I think this is great in general, absolutely. But it's an extra level of amazing to me because I'm seeing first-hand how it will benefit and help schools.
By the way, in the 10 years that Berlin City Auto Group has doing these donations through their Drive for Education program, over $700,000 has been raised and donated ($704,318 to be exact).
Good on ya, Berlin City Auto Group. And thank you for helping out my little brother, his friends, and as many students and teachers across New England as you can. You're making a huge difference.