By David Fortier
A teacher in the Bristol Public School system showed up at Monday’s meeting of Bristol Central High School’s Interact Club to thank the members for helping to make her daughter’s Make-A-Wish grant come true — and to celebrate a milestone for the club.
Over the past 25 years, the club has donated $50,000 in total to the Make-A-Wish Foundation, which makes wishes come true for children aged 2-and-half and 18 years.
“My husband and I are so grateful for people like you guys who are taking the time and being selfless and raising money for those to have an experience that they might not,” said Kara Satalino a K-5 math coach in Bristol Public schools for the past 17 years.
The Satalino family of six–daughter Cecelia, mom, dad and three brothers–stayed in Florida at a little village called “Give Kids the World,” a Make-A-Wish partner, in November. They visited Disney World and Universal Studios.
“Make-A-Wish really took everything into consideration to make it as stress free for our family who is so used to stress,” said the mother of a local Make-A-Wish grantee. “They took the time to really interview us beforehand and make sure they had everything set up.”
Satalino joined Make-A-Wish’s Community Development Manager Christina Alt to thank the students for their contributions and to share a real-life story about how those donations work and who they help.
Her daughter, Satalino said, lives with cystic fibrosis, a life-threatening lung condition requiring constant attention and a strenuous daily regimen.
Satalino explained to the students that Cecelia has to spend much of her day doing things that healthy people might take for granted.
“She has to wake up every morning and do a 60-to-90-minute treatment and take a ton of medicine before she can even get ready for school,” Satalino said. She does the same every night before she goes to bed.
Left to right: Kara Satalino addresses BCHS Interact Club members, Make-A-Wish Senior Community Development Manager Christina Alt, Interact Club Faculty Advisor Kelly Monahan-Dinoia | Laura Bailey
Left to right: Senior co-president of the Interact Club Olivia Blanca, Bristol Central High School Interact Club members listening to Kara Satalino speak. | Laura Bailey
The exercises involve chest therapy, which means clapping hard on her chest to bring up any mucus in the lungs. When she is sick, she has to do this routine four times a day.
“So imagine sitting four times a day for about an hour and a half and have someone clap on your chest,” she said. “That’s not something that we really have to put with up.”
Satalino said her daughter’s disease doesn’t have a cure, but it does have a big impact on her life. At the moment she is doing well, but the disease is progressive and her condition might change over time.
“She has been admitted to the hospital multiple times for complications of the disease,” Satalino said, “And that’s just not something that typical kiddos would have to put up with.”
As things would have it, Satalino is no stranger to many of the students. She has either coached them or worked with a family member or just come in contact with them by being in the same school.
“Olivia,” Satalino said, “I have her sister in first grade. I’ve known them since she was in pre-K.”
Olivia is Olivia Blanca, one of the senior co-presidents of the Interact Club.
Blanca said that the fundraising has changed through the years, but it always surrounds an annual Powderpuff football tournament, where girls’ teams from each grade are coached by members of the boys’ football team.
“The club is planning on doing the Powderpuff event of the foreseeable future,” she said. “I don’t see any reason why we’d be stopping, and we really enjoy it.”
Blanca said that she has been one of the organizers of the Powderpuff event over the past two years, and she played in the games as well.
“I absolutely love it, and I love seeing the impact we’ve made on Make-A-Wish.”
This year’s event raised $2,534.
Blanco said that total includes the sale of donuts and coffee donated by Dunkin Donuts, and funds raised from the sale of t-shirts that each grade makes and sells for the tournament.
Alt, from Make-W-Wish, said that Bristol Central is the longest standing high school supporter.
“They’ve been putting this on for 25 years,” she said, “helping make local wishes come true.”
Hitting a milestone of raising over $50,000, she said, is incredible.
“Just to put that into perspective,” Alt said, “that is the equivalent of granting five wishes for local Connecticut kids, because the average cost of a wish in Connecticut is $10,000.”
“It’s incredible,” she said. “It’s so inspiring when we see kids come together to help other kids in the local community.”
Faculty advisor of the Interact Club, Kelly Monahan-Dinoia has advised the group the entire time.
“People often asked me over the years,” said Monahan-Dinoia, who has taught Latin for 36 years, “how do I get these kids to do all of these wonderful volunteer projects, fundraisers for charities that they pick and that they are interested in. People think that we’re giving extra points or extra credit.”
“No, they do this because they’re good kids,” she said. “There is nothing more to it. This is a group of kids who just want to make a difference.”
Aside from the club’s fundraising for Make-A-Wish, there are more activities throughout the year.
Once a month the students go to the Bristol Senior Center where they serve dinner to Bristol seniors. Starting in November, the club gets information, not names, of Bristol people in need, and put together baskets for Thanksgiving Dinner.
“I say to them,” she said, “‘close your eyes,’ I am sitting at the computer, ‘tell me, it’s Thanksgiving Day, what’s on your table.'”
She then types up a list and then the students sign up for something.
“Everyone can participate,” she said. “You could sign up for a can of corn or a can of cranberry sauce or make a pumpkin pie or an apple pie.”
Some kids get together and purchase a turkey.
“Things like that,” she said.
For the December holidays, the group asks for a wish list from the same families.
“We pass around the list and people sign up for what they want to bring in.”
The activities don’t stop there, she said. In the springtime, there’s cleaning up the trail at Barnes Nature Center, the Easter egg hunt at Indian Rock.
The group volunteers regularly at Indian, she added, as well as at Imagine Nation. There is an open line of communication between her and the directors at both locations, Monahan-Dinoia said.
“The directors of Imagine Nation and Indian Rock send me an email and say, ‘This is coming up. Can you get me some volunteers.’ We put it out to kids, and they sign up for what they want to do and when they want to do it.”
Overall, Monahan-Dinoia said she could not be prouder of the students.
“We have been doing that for 26 years now,” she said.
Satalino is grateful, too.
“We were able to take everyone,” Satalino said, “something we would never have done, because just thinking about germs and flying, going away with all the treatments and medications, it was all very overwhelming, but Make-A-Wish made it so easy for us.”
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