Dreams to Life, is a start up project Van Meter's National Honor Society is working on. We wanted to do a service project and we knew we wanted to help our King Dreamers. The King Dreamers are fifth graders form King Elementary in Des Moines. Van Meter's NHS members mentor The King Dreamers, we have been mentoring them since last year.
The King Dreamers is a group of kids that are in the I Have A Dream Foundation. The foundation is a program that these kids were selected to be in. The foundation will pay for each students college education if they stay in the program until they graduate.
The King Dreamers is such a great group of kids. Kids that might have some difficult things going on in their homes. We think it is great being able to mentor them, they look forward to our visits. Just recently they came to our school for a visit. They loved it, they took a tour of our school, and they played with our laptops. It is so powerful seeing them wanting to learn about what we do at our school, being a one to one school district. We have so many great tools that help us learn. The kids were Skyping each other in different corners of the room, we had some kids on youtube showing off some of their dance moves. Kids in the Mac lab talking on a prison chat, talking to her father. This is when we knew, we knew from seeing those kids faces' light up, when they were on our laptops, that we wanted them to be able to have that same opportunity we have.
This is when Mrs. Miller contacted Danny Heggen from Youth Venture. He came to our school, he helped us brainstorm ideas to raise money for the dreamers. We came up with we wanted to have a silent auction event. Our goal is to raise 6,000 dollars to get The Dreamers 2 Mac desktops, 4 Flip Cameras, 2 still cameras, and an itouch. By raising this money and by giving them this technology we are helping by giving them new tools to better expand and showcase their knowledge. We also hope to advance their exposure to technology. The future is changing and even today people younger and younger are being exposed to technology. We hope to do the same with our group of kids.
Dani Hubbard and I worked on filling out paper work and figuring out details for our project for multiple hours. We wanted to get the word out about what our project was and to get other people excited about what we are doing. The NHS team wanted to have a holiday party to announce our project with community members and The King Dreamers. Dani, Andrew Flaherty, and I presented a slide show explaining what the NHS team wants to do for The Dreamers. They were so excited. We had multiple meetings where we presented our campaign to School Board members, for the Youth Venture board members, and for our staff at our school. Everyone is just as excited as we are for our project.
Our next step we are working on is finding a venue, and setting a date. We are looking at possibly having our event at Drake University. And we are shooting to have our event in late February, on a Saturday from 4-6. We will be going around to businesses in the next few weeks, asking for donations for our silent auction. I want to thank everyone for all their hard work and for their excitement in our project. We know these kids diserve what we have, and giving them these opportunities we think they will be so much better prepared for their futures.
Julia,
ReplyDeleteI am so proud of you, Dani, and all of the Van Meter NHS members. Thank you for working so hard on the Dreams to Life campaign! You are making such a difference.....not just for the King Dreamers....but also for yourself! This project will change your life forever. :)
Love, Mrs. Miller