Preschooler cashes in piggy bank to feed the hungry

By Lynn Monty, Free Press Staff Writer • Wednesday, March 3, 2010

The first thing Emma Alter wanted to share was that her favorite colors are pink, red, yellow and orange.

Dressed from head to toe in pink, and wearing sparkling slippers, the 4-year-old from Colchester then skipped over to a fat porcelain piggybank with the words “My first piggy bank” spanning its belly.

Emma was a year old when she began playing a game with the bank. She would give two light taps on the pig’s nose and into its belly the coin goes. With her bank full Emma was faced with what to do with the money she saved, a total of $317.40.

“There is so much money here,” Emma said. “I want to give it to hungry people because I don’t want them to starve.”

Her mother, Dorothea Alter, was shocked when she heard her daughter’s plan.

“It was a lesson to me because if I was told I could do anything I wanted with this money I would be like, ‘Mama’s getting a new handbag!’ It really made me think.”

“I want to do this because I’m a nice girl,” Emma said.

Emma loves to color, draw and dance, but most of all she loves to watch over her 10-month-old baby sister, Sophie.

After a special grocery shopping trip, and making a few cashiers cry, Emma Alter donated 155 pounds of food to the Chittenden Emergency Food Shelf on Feb. 23.