In the spirit of helping your neighbor and community, here is another way to help the kids and the schools without paying any additional taxes/levies/monies. The General Mills company has a program called "Box Tops for Education". It is a coupon driven program where General Mills donates monies to schools who provide proof of purchases of their products. If you look at many of your food items, you might see the following coupon/label on the exterior packaging....

   If the coupon image in this email is not shown to the left as an example, the program's web site is http://www.boxtops4education.com .

For every one of these coupons, cut from the packaging, and given to a participating school's student, there is a ten cent ($0.10) donation from General Mills to the school or school district. As you can guess, this can add up to a significant amount of money for a school. It is a painless way for us to provide financial aid to the schools in our area. Look around your kitchen and find those coupons. The full list of products is available at http://www.boxtops4education.com/Downloads/Coordinator/Clip/ParticipatingProductsFlyer2008.pdf .

If you know of a neighbor who child's school participates in this school program help them out by cutting out the small package coupon and saving them for him or her. If you don't know of a neighbor or a participating school, save them in a bag or envelope and provide them to my wife or I every 2-4 weeks or so. It's a neat program to have around now, especially in today's trend of government cutbacks.