KAILUA — When Windward O'ahu school and youth groups want to raise money for trips or other needs, they no longer have to rely on the time-honored tradition of selling tickets for chili, cookies or chicken.

Instead, some groups can obtain grants of up to $5,000 for doing volunteer work in their community.

Under the year-old program developed by the Harold K.L. Castle Foundation, Windward groups have received more than $40,000 for doing local cleanup projects, painting over graffiti and providing artwork to other area organizations.

"There's no way we could have raised that money on our own. It's made a lot of things possible," said Sherrie Fries, a parent at Kailua Elementary School, which used its grant to hire professional artists to work with students at every class level. The students, in turn, donated all their art work to other community groups, including senior citizens and residents of the state hospital in Kane'ohe.

Jana Fry, grants manager for the Castle Foundation, said the idea for the program is to free young people from the drudgery of fundraising and reward them for channeling their energy in new ways.

"It lets them take all that energy that normally goes into car washes and ticket sales and put it into community service," she said.

Duane Sampson, a coach of the Kailua High School paddling team, said the team used its grant to buy equipment and to travel to this year's state championship. In return, team members participated in a daylong clean-up project on Maunawili Falls hiking trails.

"The nice thing is that the kids go into the community and make it a better place, and they get something more than just feeling good in return," Sampson said.

Participants said the program offers an opportunity for the students and young people to be involved at every step of the operation, including helping with the grant writing and generating ideas for community service.

"They planned the project from beginning to end, thinking up what they wanted to do, how they would do it and how much it would cost," Sampson said.

Jennie Jacobsen, a fifth-grade student at Ka'elepulu Elementary School, joined other members of the Team Kailua tennis program in "an extreme makeover" of the public tennis courts they practice on. The group scrubbed and painted courts and fixed up nearby park areas over two weekends.

In return, the club's Michael Mackinnon Fund, a scholarship program started in 1998, received $5,000 from the foundation, which will be used to help some club members afford dues, uniforms and equipment.

"One of our coaches thought it would be a good idea if we cleaned up the area, so we painted benches, changed lights, mowed the lawn and a lot of other stuff," said Jacobsen, 11. "It was hard work, but if was fun, too, because everybody helped out. We didn't want to wait for somebody else to do the work; we just did it."

One group of regular players at the court was so thankful for the job that they've offered to throw an ice cream party for those who participated in the work, Jacobsen said.

The program also takes the burden of fundraising off the students.

"There's only so many times you can go back and ask people to buy sweet bread or chili tickets, especially if there are a couple of kids in the same family. You can't expect the aunts and uncles to keep buying things," Sampson said.

At Kailua Elementary, officials used the grant money to provide a school program in the arts, an area where public funding has been cut in recent years. The response was amazing, Fries said.

"At first, a lot of the kids didn't think they could do anything like this. They didn't have much experience with art at all," she said.

With the help of the professional artists paid with the grant money, each class in the school ended up producing a project that will be seen in different parts of the community.

Kindergarten students painted watercolors for senior citizens, first-graders decorated stepping stones for a Kailua women's shelter and second-graders donated batik wall hangings to a shelter in a Kane'ohe shelter. Other classes made artwork for hospital patients and residents of a transitional housing area in Waimanalo.

"Without the grant, we wouldn't have had any art program at all," Fries said.

Fry said the foundation is continuing the program this year, with $50,000 available for Windward youth projects. Applications are accepted year-round, she said.

Reach Mike Leidemann at mleidemann@honoluluadvertiser.com.