Here is how the Rancher Relief Fundraiser got started at Anselmo-Merna Public School. Everything came together today when we heard back from our first family! I cant tell you how proud I am of my students and my community! PLEASE SHARE!!! :) I had heard a few stories, especially from conversations with my mom who told me about the loss of cattle some of our close family friends who ranch around the New Underwood area had sustained with the Atlas storm, but being a head coach in the heart of volleyball season, hadn’t really had an opportunity to sit down and fully educate myself on the current situation. Wednesday of the week the storm hit, I was doing my usual facebook check before bed and a picture really got my attention. It was of a picture one of my friends had liked of three mares with the caption, “I’m going to miss my girls”. Tears welled up in my eyes immediately thinking of my own horse and family’s horses. I knew right then and there that this was tied to Atlas and what an unbelievably devastating storm it had to have been if horses had died in it. I started to dig through the countless articles and stumbled across a blog by Jodene Shaw, who is a cattle ranching wife from Rapid City, South Dakota, I barely got through the article without completely breaking down having come from a ranching background myself. I knew that this was more than just a few cows and dollars that were lost that could easily be replaced. I knew the years, hard work, strategic planning, and sacrifice it took to acquire the type of cows these people had. I knew immediately after reading that blog post that I wanted to help in whatever way I could. I understood the full spectrum of what happened and how these people were going to be devastated financially and mentally. The next day in all my classes, I made my students first read an article on storm Atlas. After going through the facts of the storm, I brought out the blog written by Shaw and shared it with the class and followed it up by some pictures of dead livestock that had perished in the storm. From the look on my student’s faces, I knew this had struck a cord with them. We then went into class discussion, I related the effects of the storm to the kids and helped them understand the seriousness of the situation and emotional damage the storm would have on ranchers. All of my students had a ranching background or knew someone that did; therefore, everyone felt compelled to help. I brought forward the idea of starting a fundraiser to benefit ranchers and all the kids jumped on board. I matched them up with an elementary class and had them set a class and school goal. From there, we were up and running with our fundraiser efforts. Digging right in, we had bake sales and split-the-pot raffles at football and volleyball games, and even went door to door as well as, asked anyone and everyone we could to donate to our cause. Within a week, we had reached our school goal of $6,000. We then set a new school goal of $10,000. As the kids continued to raise money, my dad, John Anderson of Plainview, NE, suggested that instead of giving the amount we raised to the BHACF/SD Rancher Relief Fund, that I try to personalized the fundraiser by getting profiles of families affected and have the kids read through them and choose who would receive their portion of the fundraiser. Having raised cows and horses for over 25 years, my family had made quite a few connections. One of those connections happened to be John Johnson, an agribusiness man out of Rapid City, South Dakota, who used to read our pedigrees at our horse sales. I contacted him and informed him on what we had been doing for the ranchers in South Dakota, he was thoroughly impressed with our fundraising efforts and was more than happy to help. He generated a list of ten ranchers who had lost 45-100% of their cowherds and calf crop in Atlas. Each high school class got to read through the family profiles and decide who would receive their half of the grand school total. This was one of the hardest parts of the whole fundraiser, picking who would receive a check and who would not. I decided to have an assembly to wrap up the fundraiser after I had an unexpected phone call from Farm Credit Services of Broken Bow, Nebraska, who had heard about the fundraiser and wanted to surprise the kids and donate $1,500. Once that incredibly generous donation was in, I started to figure the school’s grand total and realized that in just a little over a month our little school had raised an unbelievable amount of $12, 340! I divided this school total evenly between the classes so that each family would receive a check of $2, 056. At the end of this week, I will be sending out six envelopes that include a check, a picture of the high school and elementary class they were matched up with, and a hand written letter from the high school class. These families have no idea about what we have been doing so everything will be a complete surprise to them. We all look forward to hearing back from the families to bring everything full circle and make the fundraising more meaningful to the students. When I started this fundraiser I had no idea that it would be so successful. Not just in the terms of raising so much money, but the lessons it taught the kids. I saw students step up and do things I never saw them do in a classroom setting. The kids worked together, planned, organized, and were motivated to work towards a goal, which they not only met but exceeded. However, the most important lesson they learned was the one of compassion. No matter how passionate I was about this cause, the fundraiser would have never gone anywhere if the kids wouldn’t have felt the need to help, to show some kind-heartedness in a world that is increasingly self-seeking in the hopes of trying to make someone’s life just a little bit better. Furthermore, I think it reflects very highly on the students, their parents, and our communities that we could accomplish raising such a big amount of money in such a short time. I think I speak for everyone on our staff and in our community that we couldn’t be more proud of Anslemo-Merna Public School!
Posted on: Wed, 29 Jan 2014 01:57:30 +0000
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