And We're Rollin' on the River......

Things have been up and down, that why we're Rollin' on a river!
Our kids just did a Health Rocks presentation at The YMCA. They did a great job! The kids were really responsive during the presentation. They did the one I like with the straws. Health Rocks is a presentation for 8-12 year olds done by kids around that age and older. It is lead by a teen (Yasmeen) who birthday was on the eighth of October she is wonderful and 17. (Happy Birthday Yaz!) I am proud to work with this beautiful well rounded young woman who loves children and is a born leader. She would work with children no matter what the circumstance.

We are presently working on a presentation for Health Rocks that we will be presenting at the Coastal Carolina Fair. Ten kids will participate in this presentation. We have two kids who are creating a Folklore Project in honor of their mother who has passed away. This project is a media project. Once they have completed it I will send you guys a copy of it. We will also have an art exhibit one of our students is drawing. We will also being doing a cooking presentation. They will be cooking no bake cookies. Our second and third graders will make that presentation. Yasmeen is the super teen leader supervisor who keeps me grounded. Keeps me forever pushing on!

Last month we trained a group of middle school teens to become mentors. Our training lasted three weeks. It covered documentation, communicating with your teen leader and communicating with the kids, positive reinforcement for good behavior and a point system for those who are hard cases. We also talked about maintaining your grades while helping others. We created a time for our youth leaders to work on their own projects after the kids have been served. The final portion of the training was working on a service project. So far the trainees are doing okay with the kids. We have had no major catastrophes. Yasmeen and I revamped the whole system. Volunteers will have more support because of what we changed.

We have financial challenges at this time. We continue to push forward. We have a website that you can donate on. We are working on some creative ways for fundraising.
The links are below. http://cash.zeropricetags.com/?REF=55870

http://cards.swiftrewards.net/?ref=Hipkhouse

I have been working on collaboration with the Art Institute in Charleston to host a graphic arts class for our kids. I am hoping that the program will be ongoing as the Art Institute offers a host of other programs that our kids would be interested. We are in the beginning stages of this project. We are also working on a mentorship program with Clemson finding mentors for kids whose parent or parents are prisoners. Building Dreams is the name of that program.

Well that all for now.....Bye
Renae