Rider Degraw is on his way to helping fund a new wheelchair for a child in need.

The eight-year-old has come up with a clever way to make good use of pop tabs. 

"I'm collecting them to raise money for wheelchairs." 

The grade three Cochrane Christian Academy (CCA) student is hoping to collect 100,000 tabs. 

Michelle Kachur, Child Development Advisor, at CCA said there's been such a positive reaction from the rest of the school that the other classrooms have jumped on board to collect tabs too. 

"It really started with a conversation between Rider and myself where he told me about this and we were laughing and I said, how many pop tab cans do you think we could actually collect across the school? And then I thought, you know what?, this sounds like a cool idea, so I asked him, hey what would you think about doing that across K-8, and so we did."

The initiative only started a couple of weeks ago and they're already at 27,150 tabs

Rider Degraw

There's a competition happening between CCA classrooms right now and the class that brings in the most tabs will get a popcorn party on Valentine's Day. 

Once all the tabs are collected they will cash them in. CCA will issue a cheque for their value to the March of Dimes Assistant Devices Program who will then put the money towards a wheelchair for a child in need. 

Kachur said the wheelchair could go to a child anywhere in Canada. 

Degraw doesn't want this initiative to be a one-off and he is challenging other schools within RVS to raise money for worthy causes. 

Buying a full wheelchair with all the bells and whistles would require around five million pop tabs said Kachur.

They're collecting the tabs until February 13. Members of the community are welcome to drop tabs off at CCA.