H.O.P.E. Thrift Store

On February 4th Billy Walker and I choose to volunteer at the H.O.P.E. Thrift Store. We helped the staff there by organizing and sorting one of their back rooms. I was there for 2 hours and Billy stayed for 3 hours. The main thing that we did was organizing the wide assortment of books that they had stored in the back. We also cleaned off numerous items that they had in the room as well.

YMCA After-School Program

Kristen Kretzer and Krista Mast helped out at the Macomb After-School Program at Edison Elementary on Friday February 15th, 2013. As soon as the kids got out of school we passed out snack, then went straight to Play-Time. Since it was Friday there was no homework time, so we got to play in the gym for a little while then went to the cafeteria to play board games and card games. We played Trouble, UNO, and played some leggos with the children.

RPTA Service week (the crossing)

Norris and I both volunteered at the Crossing thrift shop in Macomb, IL. We volunteered from 12:20 - 2:30pm. Our task was to organize the books into alike categories and separate them in different boxes. As we went through the boxes we came across old year books from the 1920's, and even Dr. Seuss books. I wouldn't be surprised if they had some books that were worth a lot of money there. Workers at the Crossing get first dibs on anything that comes in so Norris was lucky enough to find a full speaker system and receiver for only $30! Organizing all of the books was surprisingly fun and the time went by really fast.

482 Service Week- YMCA Child Center

Natalie Ambroziak, Ryan Boss, and Chelsea Langford all went to the YMCA daycare center on Friday February 8th . We cleaned the gym and played with the kids. We were all there for a total of two hours. We had a great time helping out, it was a great way to give back to the community and the children.

Grand Prairie Residents Play Wii & attend WIU Basketball Game!

Description: On Wednesday February 13, 2013, Kaitlyn Morgan and I (Briana Skonicki) went to Grand Prairie Retirement Home for two hours. Our main focus for the day was to get the residents up and moving. By doing that we decided to bring along with us Wii Sports and the game we decided to play with the residents was bowling. We thought bowling was appropriate because either the residents could stand up or also sit down and bowl if they were not comfortable standing up. We ended up getting two out of the 15 residents to come and play Wii with us in the retirement homes game area. Some of the things that the residents could do on a daily basis were either watch TV, watch movies, go on the computer, draw, or finish a puzzle. Even though after knocking on all the residents doors we only got two of them to come down, we still had a very nice time playing Wii bowling with them. Howie and Dorris were the two residents we played bowling with. They both showed a lot of interest in wanting to bowl with us and were open to learning how to bowl. Kaitlyn and I had a lot of fun spending our Wednesday afternoon bowling with these two residents. We both decided to go to the WIU girls basketball game on Saturday February 16^th with all of the residents as well which was from 3pm to 630pm. I believe the residents had a fantastic time within the two days that we spent with them!

Horn Field Campus

Shayla Hill and Elizabeth Flesher

We went to Horn Field Campus on February 13th. We wanted to do something outside since it was so nice out and Mindy didn't really want us to cut out the honeysuckle so she had us go clean up the road along the campus. We were out there for two hours cleaning up, we filled up two huge trash bags full of litter people just throw out their windows while driving down the road. It was a super nice day to do something outside so we enjoyed ourselves while we were out there. We both also realize even more now the importance of keeping our world clean and how much better it looks when it is! =)



RPTA 482 Service Week - Donating to Starkey Hearing Foundation

Bridget Gatzke and Abbie Markley drove to Davenport, Iowa on February 12, 2013 and went to the Build-a-Bear Workshop.  We made multiple stuffed animals with hearing aids and donated them to the Starkey Hearing Foundation.  The Starkey Hearing Foundation is an organization that "brings understanding among people through hearing care by focusing on awareness, education, protection and treatment, so the world may 'hear.'"  These bears were meant to be donated to children with hearing problems so that they would feel comforted while going through hard times.