Written by Mary Cosgrove:
Erick Fortner is well on his way to becoming a major donor for the Ronald McDonald House Foundation — and he’s only in the sixth grade.
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| Staff / Tom Spigolon Erick Fortner stands with some of the 52,000 pop tabs from aluminum soda cans he has collected since 2013 to benefit the Ronald McDonald House Foundation. |
Fortner, in this school year alone, has collected 24,700 pop tabs.
Since he began his passion for collecting pop tabs in the fifth grade, he has collected 52,900, more than halfway to meeting his goal of collecting more than 100,000.
“It’s fun for me to help other people out,” Fortner said of his interest in the project. “Parents that don’t have a lot of money, they need the money for their children who have cancer, and they can’t afford to stay in hotels. The pop tabs help them out.”
He said he has several methods of collecting the pop tabs, but a majority of what he receives is in the form of donations.
Fortner, son of Dawn and Walter Fortner of Dallas, also has helped spin his spirit into a competition among his classmates. A collection jar is set up in each of the five hallways at his middle school and whichever hallway collects the most pop tabs receives a small prize.
He said anyone who would like to donate pop tabs would be much appreciated.
“The people who want to help can drop them off at my school and I can collect them there,” he said.
Fortner was first introduced to the project through the 4-H Youth Development program at Paulding County’s UGA Extension Office.
Brittani Kelley, county extension agent who works with the youth program, said each month an agent travels to each of the middle schools in the county to speak with fifth-graders about leadership, public speaking and project achievement and lead them in science projects that coordinate with their teachers’ lesson plans.
It was then that the Ronald McDonald House project was discussed, and Fortner leapt into action.
The project started at a state conference in 2002 when middle school 4-H members approached the program administrators about a way to help the nonprofit, and so the pop tab collection began.
Since its inception, the statewide effort has collected 129,236 pounds of pop tabs for a total of more than $77,000 for the charity. The Paulding 4-H program has contributed slightly more than 14,000 in its efforts, with county members last year alone collecting 453 pounds.
Kelley said all of the 4-H members enjoy collecting pop tabs, but Fortner takes it to new heights.
“Erick has really gone above and beyond to try to collect pop tabs,” she said. “He would bring thousands and thousands each month. He’s really found that this is something near and dear to his heart and he’s passionate about it. He’s on fire about collecting pop tabs. I don’t think he realizes how much he is truly helping out.”
Making donations to charity is only one of the many things the 4-H program does in Paulding County, Kelley said. It’s not just about raising chickens and blue-ribbon pigs anymore, she said.
“There is something for everyone in 4-H, whether it’s Lego robotics teams, consumer judging for people who like to shop on a dime, forestry judging, shooting sports,” Kelley said. “Overall, it’s an all-encompassing positive youth organization that is about building strong leaders for tomorrow.”
The 4-H members meet once a month, focusing on things of individual interest, as well as learning valuable life skills, such as career readiness.
“Over the past 30 to 40 years, Georgia 4-H in general has gone full circle and increased diversity in programming,” she said.
For more information on the Paulding County 4-H program, visit http://www.caes.uga.edu/extension/Paulding/4H/
