Peterborough native Jimmy Smith raising money for End 68 Hours of Hunger

Last year, Peterborough native and current Florida resident Jimmy Smith raised $8,890 for End 68 Hours of Hunger. This year, he hopes to help out again.

Smith’s fundraising started on a whim last year, when he tuned into a pandemic-spurred online service from Union Congregational Church, which he said he attends when he returns to Peterborough. He saw a congregation member, Carele Mayer, talking about the collection she was doing for End 68.

“And I said, ‘Let me see what I can do,’” Smith said. He mobilized a group of people living in his retirement community, collecting anywhere from $5 to $500 in donations. 

“He is a fundraiser extraordinaire,” Mayer said. 

“It’s the old way of doing business,” Smith said. “Personal contact. You tell people what you need, what it’s going for, and they give to it.”

Smith was raised in Peterborough, but left in 1967 to attend college in Ohio, where he lived his adult life before moving to Florida following his and his wife’s retirement. 

“Peterborough’s still my home and that’s the way I consider it,” he said.

When Smith initially started raising money, it was going toward peanut butter to be included in the bags of food that End 68 provides for students to last from school lunch on Friday until breakfast on Monday. But he raised so much money that it couldn’t all go toward just peanut butter, so Mayer and End 68 opened an account for the funds so they could be used to buy whatever is needed.

Mayer said the work End 68 does requires many “quiet cogs” working together in one big machine.

“There are so many people that are just doing little things to make the big things work, and they’re not looking for kudos,” she said. “It makes them happy to be doing it, makes them happy to be giving.”

Smith intends to keep his fundraising open  until the end of December. So far, he has raised $3,330, and he hopes to raise $5,000.

“I’m not shooting for the moon,” he said. “You do it because it’s the right thing.”