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4/13/11

Three Missouri Chapters Win Big!

Three Missouri FCCLA Chapters have been announced as national FCCLA program award winners! Each of them wins $1000, a spot in the 2011 National Leadership Conference "Spotlight on Projects," Teen Times recognition, and recognition on stage in Anaheim, California. The winners are:


Trenton Middle School - 2011 National Families First Middle School Winner - "Meeting the Challenge."

Working locally, Trenton Middle School encouraged the community to help with a "Be the Match" donor drive for bone marrow transplants. Chapter members wanted their community and classmates to learn about the "Be the Match" foundation and how it helps people with various diseases. Since one of the TMS members lost her mother to Hodgkins and AML Leukemia this past summer, they decided to help families meet the challenge of finding healthy matches for bone marrow transplants.

In order to accomplish this donors have to sign up for the registry and have a DNA cheek swab on file with the registry. Their goal was have a donor drive and get 50 people on the registry and raise $5000 to pay for these. They surpassed their goal and had over 100 people added to the registry and raised close to $6000 with help from local partners. This project had a positive outcome and they educated others of the need for the registry and how it could help families meet the challenge when faced with a deadly disease.


Walnut Grove High School - 2011 National Community Service High School Winner - "Share Your Christmas."

Walnut Grove FCCLA organized the first annual Share Your Christmas Food Drive for students in preschool through grade 12. When members started planning, they never imagined how involved people would get. After 7 days of collecting foods, they ended up with more than 4200 items to put together food baskets for local families. While the food was being counted and sorted, students went door to door and picked up community donations of food items. This collection brought in another 600 items to our food drive. Once finished collecting, members sorted the canned and boxed food into 31 families that are being helped by the Share Your Christmas program from the Walnut Grove community.

The second part of this project involved a Change Day. Students bring in unrolled change for teachers to roll and count. As long as the teachers have money to count, the students could watch movies or play games. This year Change Day raised $2440. This money is used to purchase gifts for the 76 children involved in our Share Your Christmas project. Members helped roll change all day to help teachers on what seemed like a never-ending pile of change. The Masonic Lodge and Wal-Mart donated another $5000 to be used for clothing, shoes, and coats for the children. Our chapter officers and 10 elementary teachers and students went shopping to buy gifts and clothing for the 76 children in our community. Groups were given names, sizes, and gift requests to shop for the children.


Fair Grove High School - National Financial Fitness High School Winner - "LifeSkills Fair"

Fair Grove FCCLA created a "reality store" to teach students about the costs associated with living on their own. The event was titled "Life Skills Fair". Students in 9th and 10th grade were assigned a set amount of monthly income based on their career choice. They were also assigned a family size based on the information they provided. They were then instructed to spend their income at the different booths set-up to see how far they could stretch the money. Students were required to visit and purchase an item from each booth such as childcare and insurance. The booths included housing, transportation, insurance, grocery, childcare, banking, utilities, entertainment, medical/dental, crystal ball and Uncle Sam. Students tracked their expenses using a check register. Once the students had purchased an item from all of the booths, they were given a Payday candy bar if they were in the black and a Zero candy bar if they were in the red. Over 150 students went through the reality store. Students from the Personal Finance class, FCCLA members, FBLA members, Missouri State University FACS majors, and business community members from Fair Grove and surrounding areas all helped to make the Life Skills Fair a success.

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