Tyra Machan (left), Jenna Bernardo and Paige Malmgren sell trees Saturday. 250News photo

Prince George, B.C. – A group of students at College Heights Secondary School has been busy carrying out fundraising activities recently in an effort to put together the money needed for an exchange trip to Japan.

Some members of the group of 22 students who will make the trip to Tokyo next February have been busy selling chocolates while some others who we ran into on Saturday have been selling Christmas trees. They were standing on the sidewalk on 5^th Avenue beside First Baptist Church, wearing billboards and holding trees for passing motorists to view.

One parent, “Ray”, says the trees were donated to the cause by the I.F.S Nursery at Ness Lake and the kids were selling them for $40 apiece. He says the students sold “quite a few trees up at the school last weekend and then we moved down here today. We’ll take any remaining trees back up to the school on Sunday and hopefully will sell them too.” Ray says they started out with 115 trees and had sold about 100 of them by Saturday afternoon.

College Heights Secondary, according to Ray, is the only school in Prince George with such and exchange program. The students will head to Tokyo at spring break and will spend two weeks there before hosting a group of Japanese exchange students in March.

One of the College Heights students, Jenna Bernardo, says it costs each student close to $3,000 for the Tokyo excursion. Fellow traveler Tyra Machan says “I’m really excited about it, it’s going to b e a lot of fun.”