[caption id="attachment_2355" align="aligncenter" width="480" caption="Assistant Director of Apartment Life Jimmy Gunn, Resident Director Chris Holloway, sophomores Philip Coleman and Andrew Moore helped the DBU campus collect more than $2,157 for orphans in three months through spare change. "][/caption]

By Jenny Pope
Buckner International

DALLAS – What started as a goal to raise $25 a month in a boys’ dormitory at Dallas Baptist University led to a campus-wide orphan care fundraiser calling for change through the collection of spare change.

Resident Director Chris Holloway, 23, has been on several mission trips with Buckner International, a global nonprofit ministry that helps orphans, vulnerable children and families. As part of the organization’s Voice Council in 2009, he wanted to inspire his dorm to collect just $25 a month to help orphans where he had served.

“I got a five gallon water jug and put a banner on it, it was nothing fancy,” Holloway recalled. He asked resident assistants for help to get the word out among the students. When the first month ended, they had collected $571.68.

It wasn’t long before the rest of the campus’ 1500 students living in dorms and apartments became involved, said Jimmy Gunn, assistant director of apartment life. “We had our maintenance guys go door to door, walking around to the apartments asking for spare change. They saw it as a service to go to them.”

[caption id="attachment_2356" align="alignleft" width="200" caption="Resident director Chris Holloway initiated the 'Change for Change' project at DBU. "][/caption]

Competition between the dorms and apartments fueled the project, and after three months they had raised more than $2,157 to benefit international orphans through Buckner.

“As we competed, it was the orphans who won,” Holloway said.

Sophomore Phillip Coleman from Longview, Texas said the change project was a “really simple way to get involved. I don’t carry a change purse or anything, and change can be annoying to keep on you. We kept a Gatorade bottle in our room for loose change, and at the end of the month, we’d dump all the change in the jug.”

“It was nice to results,” he continued. “Chris would put up a flyer at the end of the month to show us our success. Our motto was always, ‘Every penny counts.’”

Students found creative ways to get involved, Holloway said. One student would play his guitar and put his case out in front of him to collect “tips,” which he would in turn give to the project.

Holloway said he was overwhelmed at the way students responded to the fundraiser.

“Their hearts have been incredible. Some gave $20 bills. We don’t who they are because they don’t want us to know. It’s for the glory of the Lord.”

Students are DBU are still collecting Change for Change during the spring semester. Holloway hopes the project will continue for many years.