Mabelle B. Avery Student Collects Donations for Animal Shelter

For Mabelle B. Avery Middle School sixth grader Ava Roche, her love of animals and desire to do a benefit for animals led her to collect money, food, and dog toys and donate them to the .

“At first we were going to do it for the Connecticut Humane Society, but then I realized that we have an animal shelter here in our own town so I just decided to do it for here,” Roche, 11, said.

Roche’s mother works in Enfield and spoke to Enfield Animal Control Officer Eric Boucher, who is also the ACO for Somers.

That got the wheels in motion.

Roche said that she brought a large donation box to school and that it was upstairs in the lobby for about a week. She said that there were also posters all around the school and that it was mentioned every day in the announcements that are made over the loudspeaker.

Boucher figures that Roche collected a couple hundred dollars worth of food and toys for the shelter. She collected dog and cat food, including kitten chow - just in time for kitten season.

Roche, who is the president of the Association of Student Democracy at – and is the first sixth grader ever to do so, also collected $120 in cash to donate to the shelter.

“We put the jar of money in the cafeteria and had everybody donate their loose change and for some of the lunches I went around to the tables to see if anybody had any change,” she said.

Roche said that she was a little bit disappointed that she wasn’t able to collect more money to donate.

“The only reason I was a little disappointed was because of the money,” she said. “We were supposed to have a hat day and if you brought a dollar in, you could wear a hat – and we never did. That was the only reason why I was disappointed.”

While she was a bit disappointed, Boucher couldn’t have been happier.

“This is a lot,” he said. “With the town being in such a tight budget right now, I have to get special permission to even buy any food or anything right now. This is quite a bit. When she called and asked, I said, ‘Absolutely.’ I couldn’t ask for more.”

Watching the kids in her school donate money and bring in food and toys made Roche very happy.

“I think it was really cool,” she said. “I know that one of my good friends brought in a lot of it so that made me really happy to see.”