Make an Impact Targets Holidays
- Nov 11, 2014
- 3 min read
By: Kendall Haney,
Jr. Infectious Disease Correspondent
On October 29th a large number of Impact Crusaders along with their club sponsors, Julie Davis and Shanna Bachman, held a meeting to emphasize helping others over the holidays, and to introduce their new club President, Abbie Nibblett.
Abbie Nibblett comes to the Impact with an impressive resume of previous service to her community. In addition to helping out at various adult day care centers, she has been an intern at her dance studio, a volunteer at her local library, a leader in a gourmet cupcake fundraiser, and a regular recruit for Santa’s Angels.
Before getting down to the business of helping others, students started off with a few icebreakers to get to know each other better as a team. The first icebreaker was called “Let’s Get to Know You,” and the second was “Four Corners.” After this, students talked about the different issues that plague people around the world, and how they can reach out from their virtual environment into the outside world.
One of the first things students and moderators alike talked about was how 1 in 8 women will get breast cancer, and how every 13 minutes a woman dies of breast cancer. However, if a woman with breast cancer detects it early on, there is a good chance doctors can stop it before it becomes too big of a problem.
The teachers also talked about how there are ways you can help prevent cancer. People can do things like eat healthily and exercise. These are important for every day health, and they play a big part in not getting cancer. It’s also good to know the signs of breast cancer, so that if you get it, you can detect it early on.
There are ways students can help people with cancer as well. Students can help as volunteers in fundraisers. Students can even donate hair to groups, such as Wigs for Kids or Pantene. Students and adults alike can go to Cancer.org to learn about other ways they can help people with cancer.
After that, students talked about Thanksgiving, and what students planned to do for the holidays. Of course, students acknowledged that Thanksgiving is an American holiday, thus not everyone celebrates it. That said, giving thanks to others is a global habit.
The moderators then challenged all students to make a slide talking about what they would do for the next Make an Impact meeting. The slide would be Thanksgiving-inspired, and students would describe with both words and pictures what they planned for this year’s holiday. After they have created their slides, they may send them in to the Make an Impact e-mail, k12makeanimpact@gmail.com. The slides must be finished before the 29th of November, otherwise the moderators won’t have time to review and add them.
Afterwards, Mrs. Bachman encouraged the students to volunteer for different charities during November. She gave an example of one of the things students could do, which was go on food deliveries to the ill and elderly.
Moderators and students then talked about Operation: Christmas Child, a Christian based organization which could be found at http://www.samaritanspurse.org/what-we-do/operation-christmas-child/. Part of this program was Shoeboxes. The organization also helps people, especially children who get the shoeboxes, who receive a 12 season Bible study, as well. One of the most memorable lines of the evening was that the shoebox program leaves “An Eternal Impact – What goes in a shoebox is great fun, but what comes out is eternal.”
The moderators directed meeting attendees to a website talking about how to pack a shoebox. Students could put anything they wanted in it, but should be mindful to think about what other people would want. People who fill a shoebox don’t know to who or where it will go when they create it, but students can track the box so that students can see it when it arrives to its destination.
The meeting wrapped up shortly afterwards, and moderators enthusiastically asked participants if they had any ideas to make the club better. Some ideas were tossed around. One of the most noteworthy was mentoring each other. Afterwards, the moderators confirmed that the next meeting would be on November 19th, at 11am EST. Overall, it was a very eventful and successful class connect.
Image Credit: http://www.cattell.net/devon/Harleyfarms/a_7277.jpg
Comments