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JS FBLA surpasses goal in weSHOREcare project

LAURA JAMESON/THE EXPRESS From left, FBLA members Max Ferguson, Stephanie Steinbacher, Lexey Cohick, stand with Pastor Kerry Aucker after presenting a check for $15,945.47 to The New Love Center in Jersey Shore.

JERSEY SHORE — For the second year in a row, the Jersey Shore Chapter of Future Business Leaders of America (FBLA) has surpassed their goal for their weSHOREcare project.

The project began two years ago as part of the FBLA’s Community Service Project. The goal was to help The New Love Center in Jersey Shore.

“We met with Pastor Aucker of The New Love Center in May 2018 and we knew we wanted to work with the center, but we weren’t sure in what capacity,” Pennsylvania FBLA Chapter President Max Ferguson, said.

Ferguson, a senior as the high school, said Aucker first suggested they help with the center’s Facebook page and other similar tasks.

“I think we decided we can go bigger,” he said. “We asked what we could do to help the most and he said that the holiday meal boxes are what takes up a lot of time and effort from a lot of the people.

LAURA JAMESON/THE EXPRESS FBLA members, from left, Max Ferguson, Stephanie Steinbacher, and Lexey Cohick, stand with YWCA representatives Executive Dawn Linn, middle, and Communication Director Anna Thompson, second from left, after presenting a check for $12,000 to the YWCA for construction of an outdoor playground.

Last year, FBLA set a goal of collecting enough food items to fill 500 food boxes. They doubled that and ended up collecting enough for 1,000 boxes.

This year they set the goal at 1,000 boxes and, once again, surpassed that goal with 1,500 meal boxes.

Each meal box contains a whole turkey, two cans of green beans, two cans of corn, two boxes of stuffing, two cans of gravy, one can of cranberry sauce, one can of pumpkin and one can of evaporated milk.

Every school in the district was tasked with collecting one item each. And they did more than asked, donating 9,489 food items. The goal was set at 5,000 items.

Avis Elementary School collected 950 cans of evaporated milk, Salladasburg Elementary collected 916 cans of cranberry sauce, Jersey Shore Elementary collected 2,305 boxes of stuffing, Jersey Shore Middle School collected 1,508 cans of corn, Jersey Shore Senior High School collected 1,898 cans of turkey gravy and the faculty and staff across the entire district collected 1,912 cans of green beans.

The extra 500 boxes worth of food items will be used for Easter meal boxes in April, FBLA Advisor Dolly Oden said.

The Easter meal boxes were implemented thanks to the FBLA, Oden said.

“Because we easily met the 500, that’s when we implemented the Easter Meal box which they didn’t usually do,” she said.

The thousands of canned items were also collected in a smaller time frame than the previous year, she added.

“The way the holiday fell we only had three weeks to collect. So actually we collected more in a shorter period of time this year. That was exciting,” Oden said.

Pastor Aucker expressed his gratitude to the students, staff and community during a check presentation at Jersey Shore School District’s board meeting last week.

“I want to express our appreciation to the school district and students,” he said. “It’s beyond words what you’ve done.”

Along with food items, the FBLA raised $28,135.47 through donations from businesses in both Clinton and Lycoming counties.

The funds were split between various programs including The New Love Center, the YWCA, to pay for AP testing at the high schoo and the back pack program which sends food home with children who may not have access to it.

Oden said between 40 and 50 businesses spanning from Williamsport to Lock Haven donated funds and services to help with the project.

Many of those local businesses were recognized during FBLA’s Day of Caring on Nov. 22.

Through a donation from Jersey Shore State Bank, students traveled throughout the area to deliver t-shirts and thank you’s to many of the businesses that donated money toward the turkeys included in the meal boxes.

The excess funding that remained was put toward a monetary donation to The New Love Center and the YWCA.

The decision to help the YWCA came in October this year, Lexey Cohick, sophmore vice president, said.

Cohick said a group of students visited the YWCA, 814 W. Fourth St., Williamsport, in October and began discussing the possibility of helping their programs.

“Some of the ideas they threw out were birthday boxes. We would fill birthday boxes for children and moms who had birthdays there,” Cohick said.

A larger project was the construction of a playground near the facility.

“They felt that board games weren’t sufficient enough. They felt that it was kind of getting old and they needed something new,” she said.

They were in the process of collecting funding for the project when the FBLA offered help.

Oden said Executive Director Dawn Linn and Communication Director Anna Thompson were “instrumental” in the partnership between FBLA and YWCA.

“They touched our hearts not by just (the donation)… but their leadership. Everything the FBLA is doing, it’s very much appreciated,” Linn said during the check presentation.

Thompson thanked the students as well, highlighting the positive impact the donation will have on those who live at the YWCA.

“This is life changing for those moms to see the smile on their kids faces,” she said.

Both Ferguson and Cohick expressed their amazement at just how much the FBLA and community were able to accomplish.

“I know personally I didn’t envision it spreading so far past Jersey Shore but I’m really proud it has and that makes me really happy that we were able to get the message out there,” Ferguson said. “We kept out promise. This is what we promised the community and we’re going to make sure it happens.”

Cohick agreed with Ferguson’s sentiments.

“It’s such a small community and it’s hard to get it out to everybody including Williamsport and Lock Haven. It’s really encouraging that we got to come this far. Since we know we blew it out of the water this year, we can expand it next year,” she said. “We know we’re going to meet that goal because the community has come together so much.”

Oden said she’s very proud of the accomplishments the FBLA and community have made in just year two of the project.

“It’s becoming a well recognized project. I’ll see people in the community and they’ll ask ‘where are you going next?”‘, she said. “We’re excited, we just have to get through the planning stages first.”

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