When Eton School students in Cindy Merritt’s Room 3 class started researching cleantheworld.org, a group that started by collecting new and used hotel soap, they decided to take action, too.

The organization sanitizes and recycles the soap and sends it to countries that do not have adequate access to soap products and to homeless shelters in the local area.

The students held a soap drive from April 13-20 with a goal to collect 10 lbs. of soap. Four other Eton classrooms joined the effort.

The students in Room 3 then went one step further. They asked the 7th and 8th graders to help them write letters to local hotels telling them about their project with cleantheworld.org.

The students heard back from three hotels and were able to collect 300 lbs. of soap products

At the same time Eton’s upper-level students joined a Student Rebuild project by making paper cranes. These project triggered a donation of $2 for each crane from the Bezo’s Family Foundation.

The students made 2,589 cranes or $5,178.00 matching funds from the foundation. The paper cranes will be turned into an art piece that one day will be on display in one of the rebuild projects in Japan.