Palm Middle School Student Determined to Raise $90,000 for Camp

Soft-spoken Marquis Snowden, a seventh-grader at , "is a businessman inside of a kid's body," says a former principal who knows him.
And almost anyone else who knows the exceedingly polite, confident 13-year-old would probably say the same thing.

Marquis has taken on the awesome task of raising $90,000 so all 394 seventh-grade students in the can go to the sixth-grade camp they missed last year due to state budget cuts.

Though he has raised only about $1,600 toward his goal, Marquis has no doubt he'll raise the $90,000 he and his fellow seventh-graders need for camp. "I want to have all the money by the first day of eighth grade," said Marquis, sitting in his home on Longdale Drive with homework spread before him.

Marquis' entrepreneurial odyssey began when he was a fifth-grade student. A district administrator came to to encourage students to get excited and prepared for their impending move to middle school.

Marquis asked if the class would get to go to sixth-grade camp. She answered no; budget cuts had forced the district to cancel camp. "Everybody in my class was, oh, I can't believe this!" he said.

Marquis said he thought about the dilemma for a couple of days and decided why couldn't he, with the help of his friends, raise the money and send every sixth-grader in the district to camp.

This wasn't the first time Marquis had launched a fundraising campaign. In fifth grade at Golden Avenue school, the Parent Teacher Student Association was working toward raising enough money to build a rock climbing wall on campus for the students. Marquis came up with the idea of a lemonade stand to earn funds for the project. "They raised not a lot of money, but it showed a lot of initiative by Marquis and his friends," said Principal Tom Oser. "Marquis has a lot of drive."

The PTSA, with Marquis' fundraising help, raised enough money to build the climbing wall. Oser called Marquis "a business man inside of a kid's body."

"The way he presents himself is more mature than other kids his age," Oser added.

So far, to raise money for camp, Marquis has held a candy sale, put up a recycling box that he himself empties, and sponsored a breakfast at Applebee's in La Mesa where anyone could buy a $10 ticket and Applebee's donated a breakfast to the purchaser. "We had a lot of people go to that," he said.

Marquis has plenty more ideas to raise funds for camp. In a presentation to the Lemon Grove School District Governing Board, Marquis proposed holding a jog-a-thon, a dance-off, a street fair, a bake-off and an air band contest.

"I just like to make stuff happen," the young philanthropist said. Marquis is getting plenty of help from the Jacobs Center for Neighborhood Innovation, a nonprofit foundation for research and development to try to improve the community, said Barbara Day, ownership program manager, who works with Marquis.

Day said the young student is very self-sufficient around the Jacobs Center.
"If he needs a flyer, he goes to the communications department. If he needs an update on how much he's earned, he goes to the accountant," she said. "I just think he's a very special child. We are all born to do something, whether it comes out when we're older or it comes out when we're younger. For Marquis, it's coming out right now."

But Marquis also does things his fellow classmates do. He is on a soccer team, and likes to spend time hanging out with his friends. He sings in the youth choir at church.

Marquis thinks the Jacobs Center's help is crucial to his fundraising efforts.
"Because I have a strong foundation behind me I think I'm going to raise the money," he said. "I am really looking for corporate sponsors." To that end,  Marquis has met and solicited donations from some of San Diego's biggest names in business; Irwin Jacobs, business journalist George Chamberlin, and County Schools Superintendent Randolph E. Ward. "It's exciting how much people want to meet me because of all this fundraising I am doing," he said.

Behind every strong man the saying goes, there is a woman. And Marquis is no exception. His mother, Veatrice Snowden, is behind Marquis every step of the way.
"I just have to stay healthy so I can help him reach his goals," said his mother, who has severe hip problems and needs a hip replacement after years of standing as a retail worker. "He's a different kind of child. ... he sees something and he wants to do something about it right away."

Sixth-grade camp has been canceled again this year for Lemon Grove's students, due to the ongoing budget crisis. If Marquis doesn't raise enough money for all of his seventh-grade class to go to camp, he plans to leave whatever money was raised to help this year's sixth-graders,  in hopes it will help them have a chance to go camping.