Our official kickoff meeting was held Monday Feb. 8, 2010. It went well and we had 15 youth attending. We are very proud to represent many of the local school districts! We had 2 children representing Fayette schools, 1 from Delta schools, 5 from Evergreen schools, 1 from Pettisville schools and the rest of the group represented Wauseon schools! We talked about various ways we can help the community, ways to raise money and ways we can partner with other organizations. We decided our first project will be to help out at a benefit for Tiffany Bates. She is a 14 year old girl from Fayette, Ohio who was badly burned by a corn burner in Oct. 2009. On March 6, 2010 at 6pm, St. Casper's Church in Wauseon will be holding a benefit for her and her family to help with the medical expenses. Our youth chapter will help with the dinner and clean up and in any other ways needed.

During our meeting, our youth began writing letters to the children from St. Jude's Ranch in Nevada for our new pen pal program. They are very excited to get letters back from their pen pals so they can help and encourage them through peer to peer mentoring! We have 16 letters to send to their organization! Great job guys!

You should be hearing more about our chapter in the local newspapers. Logan Rogers and Mariah Baker are teaming up to report in the Delta Atlas, Taylor Caudill will be reporting in the Archbold Buckeye, Amanda Baker will be reporting to Wauseon Expositor, The Key and Swanton Enterprise, Sarah Pilbeam will be reporting to The Advanced Reporter and The State Line News and Abby Pennington is looking into the Evergreen community paper.

NEXT MEETING: Saturday, Feb. 20, 2010 from 10am-11:30am at the Tedrow Methodist Church - Tedrow Methodist Church 17699 County Road J.

                                     BRING YOUR FRIENDS!!!!!!!