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Health & Fitness

Two Westover Students Raise $3,300 for Sandy Hook Fund

Two Westover students raise more than $3,300 for Sandy Hook School Support Fund through ribbons sale.

After the tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary School on December 14th, there was a world-wide outpouring of support for the victims’ families and to the Newtown community as a whole. Two Westover students – juniors Gabrielle DeBartolomeo of Sandy Hook and Catherine Caroe of Woodbury – were among those whose quiet but substantial efforts reflect a wonderful generosity of spirit shown in response.


Gabby and Catherine spent hours making and selling approximately 1,000 ribbons – green-and-white for the Sandy Hook school colors and blue and yellow for Westover’s – and raised $3,312.25. The students donated these funds to the Sandy Hook School Support Fund, established by the Newtown Savings Bank in partnership with the United Way of Western Connecticut.


The two classmates started working on the project within days of the shooting. “Catherine suggested the idea to me the weekend after the shooting happened,” Gabby said. “Catherine and I are close friends, and since I live in Newtown, she thought I might like to help.” Their parents paid for the supplies to make the ribbons as their contribution to the cause. 

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 “We were very surprised with the response,” Catherine said. “We originally thought we would sell a few hundred ribbons at Westover and that we would make a few hundred dollars, but not much more. Before we knew it, we had checks coming through the mail from all over the country and from people we had never met but who had heard about our project through our family members.”


They priced the ribbons at $2 each, but many purchases gave more to support the students’ fundraising efforts. “A number of people gave donations that were significantly higher than the price of the ribbons they requested,” Gabby said. “We had a large number of $100 donations and some that were even larger.”

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“Both of us wanted to do something,” Catherine explained, “but being high school students with not much time or money, there wasn’t much we thought we could really do. The ribbon project was perfect because they were easy to make and we knew people would buy them. While we were putting the ribbons together in Red Hall the last few days before the holiday break, several students wandered over to our table and helped put some together.”


The two students first sold the ribbons at Westover just before the holidays, but that was only the beginning of their sales effort. “The project grew after my dad sent an e-mail to his colleagues in his office and my grandmother spread to the word to her friends in Rhode Island,” Gabby said. “We had orders coming in from as far away as Oklahoma.”


On March 23, Gabby and Catherine were among a number of Newtown area residents invited as special guests at a concert performed by country singer Kenny Chesney at Mohegan Sun Arena. During the performance, the two students went on stage to present a “Sandy Hook Strong” bracelet to Chesney. During the concert, Chesney dedicated one of his songs, “On the Coast of Somewhere Beautiful,” to one of the Sandy Hook victims, whose family who was also in attendance that evening.

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