Hearts of Gold: the long-standing tradition of raising money for a charity organization to demonstrate the community’s collective support for outreach initiatives and our ‘hearts of gold.’ Beanie sales, spirit week, food promos, t-shirt design, and the Friday night football game have resulted in a $96,890 donation to ths year’s organization–Family promise.

Family Promise aims to end family homelessness with a community-based approach that provides prevention services, shelter, and stabilization programs to families. With over 200 affiliates across the country, the organization is aiming to change the lives of 1 million children by 2030.

Lily McIntosh ’22, along with Amelia Albers ’22, and Meg Simon ’22, are the Hearts of Gold senior student representatives. McIntosh said that as seniors, the three had the opportunity to lead fundraising efforts.

“[Hearts of Gold] is pretty special,” she said. “I like doing it every year, and especially this year it’s been super fun. We didn’t have it last year and it makes me super happy being able to sell the shirts and see the shirts being made.”

Reese Dupin ’22 designed this year’s shirt, taking three days and around 20 hours to sketch, draw, and produce the final product.

“I was inspired to create a simple design portraying the importance of the charity we are partnering with this year,” she said. “I thought that the main eye-catcher should be a house and there being a sense of warmth with the shadow of the family showing through the doorway.”

Hearts of Gold co-chair, Beth Hoekstra, said the program was born in 2009 with the intention of teaching students the importance of philanthropy and helping others.

“Since 2009, we’ve raised almost $800,000 for local charities that we might not even know existed,” she said. “It’s a financial impact for them for whatever they need, or it’s also just the awareness portion for us as a community.”

An overcrowded sea of gold-filled Memorial Field stands on Friday night. The usual football-game game vigor was amplified by the bitter realization, that, for some, this would be their last high school game. But through loud chants, waving arms, and explosive support for philanthropy, students truly demonstrated their hearts of gold.