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!!!!!!!     

I just received word from St. Jude's Ranch in Boulder City, Nevada that they are interested in starting a PenPal Program with our youth. I have been looking for awhile for a safe and secure way to set our youth up as PenPal mentors to at risk or disadvantaged kids if they choose. Believe it or not..that isn't easy! Some of the places I found online wanted to charge $5 per child to set them up with a PenPal! Other places wanted to communicate through email and that's just something I am not comfortable with especially for the younger children!! You never know who may "really" be on the other end! So needless to say I was very happy when I received word from Aubany at www.stjudesranch.org that she has 10-15 children ages 7-15 that would love to participate with our youth!

Welcome to IYN - Fulton County! Helping others especially teens has always been a passion of mine. It is a very awesome feeling to help people in a desperate time of need! After helping the Cherry Street Mission in Toledo over Christmas, I decided at the beginning of this year (2010) that I was going to help 35 local charities/non-profit organizations in some way or another this year. I started my search online just looking for ideas on where to start. Little did I know that I would soon come across what I feel was the ultimate opportunity!  It would encompass both my passion to help others and my desire to work with youths locally. What I found was a non-profit organization called The Invisible Youth Network. It was founded in March of 2007 by Founder and Chairman Russel Hartsaw in San Diego. His purpose was to provide support and resources to an estimated 1.5 million homeless at risk youth walking our streets and cities. To read more about our parent site or Russell and his endeavors with his San Diego Chapter check out:  www.invisibleyouthnetwork.net. While the San Diego chapter focuses on homeless youth, IYN - Fulton County is committed to bettering Fulton County as a whole. Some areas of local focus may include: Supporting our “homeless” shelters here in Fulton County by helping plant a garden, providing a birthday committee to ensure children are able to have a party, Helping provide items the house(s) need, Supporting our local animal shelter, Food & Clothing drives for those in need in Fulton County, Sending support/encouragement to our soldiers, School supply drive for schools in Fulton County, Adopting local families in need during the holidays and much more

There may be times the group may choose to help outside of Fulton County but it would be in ways other than financial contributions. For example, IYN – Fulton County has collected over 150 used holiday cards to send to St. Jude’s Ranch in Nevada. St. Jude’s Ranch is a home for children rescued from abused, abandoned and neglected homes. They are rescued from the vicious cycle of child abuse and given a healing and nurturing safe home-like environment where these children can learn life skills to start new lives with new chances, new choices and new hope. The cards collected are used for St. Jude’s Recycled Card Program. The children participate in making the new cards by removing the front and attaching a new back. The result is a beautiful new card made by the children and volunteers. The benefits are two-fold: customers receive "green" holiday cards for use and the children receive payment for their work and learn the benefits and importance of "going green".  For more information on this program please check out: www.stjudesranch.org.

To learn more about us or to find out how you can become a member come to our official kick off meeting Feb. 08, 2010 at 5:30 pm!!!! We would love to have your help! Our goal is to reach out and welcome all youth representing every school district in Fulton County.